Women Who Hate Men
by Indigo Assassin
Summary: When Lisbeth and Blomkvist take on the challenge of tracking down the missing Salander sister, they find themselves in deeper than they ever imagined. Reviews and constructive criticism appreciated. COMPLETE. Sequel TBA.
1. Chapter 1

**Authors Note: Well, my Lisbeth Salander obsession has reached new heights, so I've decided to write this fanfic. Beware; it's probably not that great. This was written over the course of about a week so there may be some discrepancies in my day-to-day writing style.**

**Disclaimer: Applies to all chapters. I make no mullah writing this. I could never be as awesome as Stieg Larsson so don't sue me for this pathetic bit of innocent entertainment. Okay? bueno? Good. ONWARDS!**

_January 1st_

_10…9…8...7…6_

When the count hit 6 seconds to midnight, a slender white hand shot out from beneath white sheets on a platform bed. Plague, the fucker, had pinged her Palm.

**Wasp, where the fuck are you?**

**Getting your coffee.**

She opened up the gilded cigarette case Mimmi had given her over Christmas. With it came the reminder not to use it as a digging implement in the near future or she wouldn't be seeing a third one. Fireworks for 2007 erupted in the west and rocked the glass of the apartment with every flash as Salander smoked quietly on her side of the bed.

**Bullshit. You've been gone for three hours.**

**You're right. I went home to make you coffee.**

**And fuck your girlfriend.**

**It was good, thanks for asking.**

**Just get over here and take your turn already. I just bought out fifth place in line!**

The platform bed didn't make a single sound as Salander rolled out of bed. Mimmi was sprawled on her stomach and dead to the world, the red fireworks over Gamla Stan accentuating her recently acquired cherry blossom tattoo on her hip. It had too much color for Salander's tastes, but on Mimmi it looked quite delightful.

As she shut the bedroom door behind her, she pinged Plague back.** Do you still want coffee?**

**No.**

She shuffled through the halls of the 21-room Fiskargatan apartment, slipping on the clothes that had been so haphazardly scattered about the floor earlier that evening. What wasn't hers was scooted into an unceremonious pile where they would likely remain until late morning. Salander was not afraid to admit that Mimmi was the first to christen her bed at Fiskargatan 9.

Her Powerbook G4 was open as she walked into the kitchen and started up her coffee maker. She stubbed out her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray perched on top of the machine. The screen on her laptop was black with sleep and seemed to snore while it copied her hard drive over to her external drive. Ninety-five percent of the laptop's contents had been transferred over since she and Mimmi had stumbled into the apartment three hours earlier.

She looked fondly at her Powerbook. Like all her electronics, it had been state of the art when she had first got it. It had cost her 38,000 krona at the time and the process to get it was much more tedious than any of her other previous computers. Now it was getting dangerously dated and Salander was not about to let the machine hinder her path through the cyber world.

Standing once more, she walked into her office overlooking Gamla Stan across the water and opened the top right drawer of her desk.

She came back carrying a screwdriver.

She turned the computer off for the last time before she removed all the interior components, being less than gentle with the hard drive. She placed it in an oversized pocket on her jacket.

She locked up the apartment at the top of Fiskargatan 9 and dumped the rest of the Powerbook down the garbage chute. The hard drive went into a wood chipper parked across from the Slussen tunnelbana. She had forgotten her pot of coffee by the time she exited Medborgaplatsen station on Götgatan.

* * *

><p>"5…4…3…2…1"<p>

The TVs on the walls of Kvarnen erupted in with the same fireworks Lisbeth had watched from her picture window at Fiskargatan. It was perhaps Mikael's first New Years alone since his teens. Erika was in Växjö. Her mother had died on Boxing Day. Monica…well he didn't really give a damn anymore about where or how she spent her holidays.

An obnoxious ringtone rang out in the bar and it took him a moment to realize the sound came from his leather breast pocket. _Speak of the devil_, he thought when he flipped the phone open.

"Hello?"

"Look, I don't have much time to talk. I'm on my way over to your apartment to grab my stuff. I'll leave the key on the counter when I'm done." She paused, "I'm sorry Mikael."

Neither had bothered with a goodbye as neither had anything left to say to the other. Blomkvist returned the phone to his pocket and leaned back against the fake brick façade behind him at his lonely corner table. He watched couples kiss and friends slap each other on the back in congratulations of surviving yet another year. In the crush of people, he watched as a familiar face tried to squeeze its way back to his table.

Standing before him was his dear sister Annika. "Get your feet off the chair, Mikael." She folded her arms across her chest and pursed her lips at him. When he stubbornly refused she grabbed the tips of his toes and squeezed with a power he never would have thought she possessed before dropped his feet roughly to the floor.

"Had enough of the in-laws, Annika?" She shot him and annoyed glance.

A group of women dressed in smartly tailored clothes sat down at the table behind her and Mikael could have sworn Cilla Norén was one of them. _So these were the modern Evil Fingers,_ he thought. Gone was their provocative dress, replaced with guise of the average Swedish inhabitant. He realized it had been over two years since he had last seen them here along with Salander and the leather-clad Parisian Miriam Wu.

A hand waved in his face caught his attention. "Mikael?"

"I'm sorry?" He continued to watch the Evil Fingers laugh and giggle at their table, oblivious to his attention.

"Mikael, when was the last time you saw Lisbeth?"

He immediately felt drained when her name was mentioned. "Oh I don't know. Christmas, Christmas Eve? Why?"

Annika pulled a thick sheaf of papers from her briefcase and ordered a scotch. It was most unusual for her, Blomkvist noted.

"I've been trying to have her take these since the end of November and the estate lawyer will have my head if she puts this off for much longer." She rubbed her temples and to Blomkvist it looked as though she had aged a decade since the beginning of the Zalachenko affair.

He picked up the stack of papers before Annika could even mention the words 'breach of confidentiality' and thumbed through the sixty-four pages. There were four deeds to various small scale businesses scattered throughout southwestern Sweden that if sold would probably be valued at about four million krona; a small drop in the bucket if Blomkvist could recall how much Lisbeth swindled from Wennerström's assets three years earlier. It was also specified that worth of the businesses were to be divided up between Lisbeth and her sister, Camilla.

His face remained fastidiously blank as he flicked his eyes up towards the now empty Evil Fingers table as Annika smiled and thanked the waiter when he brought her scotch. Mikael was no stranger to Lisbeth's tendency to right a wrong with her fists. He had been privy more times than probably anyone alive to the power the nearly pint-sized girl had hidden in her. He could only wonder what could have possibly set Lisbeth off in that particular instance.

When the waiter was safely out of earshot, Annika continued on. "Anyways, Camilla Salander has not existed in public records since the police report against her sister was filed. All I can find is that her file is listed as confidential and out of the country."

Blomkvist was silent for a moment. "Sounds like she ran away." He replied, still mulling over that there was yet another Lisbeth Salander out there in the world. Suddenly he pulled a pen out of his breast pocket and grabbed a napkin from the Evil Finger table.

Annika raised an eyebrow skeptically at her older brother. "What are you up to?"

"I am," he scribbled several illegible lines on the napkin and crossed all but one out, "practicing my Camilla Sjölander signature."

He held it up for her to see. "Is that good enough?"

"I can't let you do that, Mikael."

"Of course you can. All you do is hand the papers to me and Camilla Salander will sign them." His hand began to reach for the deeds but Annika was too fast for him and once again they disappeared into her briefcase.

"I know you're Lisbeth's…" she paused to find a word that could adequately describe the obviously complex relationship Mikael shared with Salander. She could find none.

She tried again, leaning forward, her voice low. "I know you fully support Lisbeth, but you can't go around trying to solve all her problems for her. If you want to do that than you might as well have applied to become her guardian." His face fell immediately and Annika decided that she might have been a tad too harsh; at least his heart was in the right place.

He tittered dangerously back in his chair with his hands folded over his chest. "So the question still remains: what do we do?"

"We? Micke, you can't interfere in this. If I can't track down this Camilla whatever-her-name-is by mid February, the courts will seize both Camilla's and Lisbeth's share of Zalachenko's assets and there won't be a damn thing I could do about it."

Blomkvist leaned further back in his chair and stared at cobwebbed filled rafters. He wondered how hard it would be to really track down Camilla Sjölander. Someone as striking as Lisbeth wouldn't be hard to find, he reasoned. If he had no luck in Sweden he could easily extend his search into nearby countries without overdoing it. Salander was the only problem. At anytime she wanted she could look into his computer and see what he was up to. He shuddered at what that could possibly mean for their brittle friendship.

He relented anyways, "Annika, would you still be horribly obstinate if I said I could track down Camilla for you?"

She knew by this point it was futile to deny Mikael's investigative side, but it didn't stop her from rejecting him once more. "Mikael, stay out of this. It might be for the best if the courts seized Zalachenko's assets and bulldozed the rest. Not a single öre in his account was earned through legal or ethical means. It's all blood money from the scandal Dag was trying to expose."

Annika slid what was left of Lisbeth's legal work into her briefcase and snapped if shut harder than she needed to. She ordered a second scotch and begrudgingly handed over her car keys to the waiter when her drink arrived.

"Now _Micke_," He groaned when he realized where she were about to go and her use of Erika's pet name for him. "Why did I find you here_alone_?"

"Well, you see, Erika is in Växjö for her mother's funeral, Malm has absolutely no interest in New Years, and Eriksson is probably asleep like an other single mother aught to be."

"And Figuerola?"

"Currently cleaning out her side of my wardrobe."

"Well I can't say I blame you." He quirked an eyebrow at her while she sipped her scotch.

"Oh don't give me that look, Mikael. You should have seen the alpha-bitch looks she would have if you even mentioned Erika or Lisbeth." Amusement crossed his features for the first time that night as he shrugged. Yes, he had noticed the 'alpha-bitch' glances and so had both Erika and Lisbeth, although Lisbeth just regarded Figuerola as a blonde bimbo and not much else. At first he was mildly offended, thinking she meant Erika, but she later clarified that Erika was for the moment at least, still considered a step above bimbo.

They sat staring at each other across the battered table, neither bothering to disturb the peace that had settled over them with talk of Mikael's former paramour. When he could take the idleness no longer, Mikael shook his wrist to reveal the Seiko gold watch Pernilla had sent him for Christmas. It had since been a constant reminder of how undeserving he was of her love over the years he'd spent apart from her. "It's getting early."

Annika set her tumbler down with a heavy thunk on the coaster and pulled out 40 krona from her purse. "Can you grab my keys? Their scotch is so watered down that even a seven year old couldn't get a DUI charge on it."

"If a seven year old could drive, you mean."

She casually slipped the tip under the drink coaster as Mikael stood. As he walked to the bar, she whispered in his ear, "You'd be surprised at what your niece did while I was on one of my trips to Göteburg over the summer."

"She gets it from her mother, surely." He exchanged her keys for a slap on the shoulder. "I remember back when you were seven or eight and tried to drive papa's truck. You wound up sticking it in neutral and went rolling backwards down the hill into the neighbors mailbox."

"Well, no mailboxes were involved this time."

Giannini kissed her older brother on his stubbled cheek at the door of Kvarnen before they parted ways in opposite directions. He stood outside the bar until Annika drove past him in her Audi, waving until she had turned right onto Götgatan and could be seen no longer.

He pulled his jacket closer to him as a sudden wind gust caught him off guard. The unseasonably cold minus fourteen weather was sinking through his layers and into his bones worse than it had on Hedeby Island. The streets were clear; it was as if it were too cold to even get a good, proper snowfall.

Turning left onto Götgatan, he'd be damned if he saw who he thought he did. Sitting on the thin ledge of Kvarnen's windowsill completely absorbed in her PDA was none other than Lisbeth Salander.

He walked up casually before addressing her. "It's a bit cold out here to be waiting for a new toy." When she didn't acknowledge him he leaned up against the windowsill with her and tried to look over her shoulder at whatever she was furiously typing out.

She tapped the screen with her stylus for the last time before dropping it back into an oversized pocket and looking straight ahead. She hoped Plague would finish up the Hostile Takeover soon as she pulled her hood down another inch over her eyes.

Blomkvist watched her out of the corner of his eye, noticing that even with her face mostly obstructed, she lacked her normal amount of makeup and piercings. It made her strangely look more mature without sacrificing the air and attitude that was uniquely Lisbeth. He decided he liked it.

A clock tower tolled once somewhere in the distance as Lisbeth opened her new cigarette case and lit one. He took one look at her taking a drag off of it and felt the familiar craving come back as he sheepishly asked if he could bum one off of her. She held out the one she had just lit before sinking down to the ground below the windowsill.

"I threw my computer down the garbage chute." She picked the cigarette from Blomkvist's dangling hand while he continued to stand. "And the hard drive into a wood chipper."

"Sounds a bit overcautious to me."

He didn't really expect to get an answer back so he sighed and sunk down against the wall to sit cross-legged next to her. She held out the cigarette for him to finish off before pulling the hood of her jacket down over her eyes again like a shield.

"If you want me to leave, I won't be hurt."

"I'm not put off with you, I'm just fucking cold." She said through a firmly set jaw. She would be damned if anyone saw her sitting there shivering if they where anyone besides Blomkvist. It was completely unfair that Plague could sit out here all night with only a light jacket and still be entirely comfortable while she could only sit there under the windowsill watching as the drunken New Year revelers slowly stumbled out of the bars.

After a while, a hand went to her shoulder and she reflexively jerked away. "I'm going to go get coffee. You look like you could use some, too." He stood, offering a hand that she wouldn't have taken before shrugging and walking off towards the tunnelbana. At least he knew where the good coffee was. Forget all the trendy twenty-four hour expresso bars along Götgatan; years of living paycheck to paycheck had taught her that sometimes the best things came relatively dirt-cheap.

Somewhere towards Fiskargatan she noticed a fire engine wailed faintly. _Maybe a kid's roman candle set a tree on fire_, she thought.

Resting her head back against the wall, she narrowly resisted the urge to jump when her pocket vibrated violently.

**Success. Doors open in 5. **Plague promptly messaged before going offline. Another mission accomplished, she smiled to herself as workers in the store started to mill around in confusion. One in the morning, five in the morning; it was a negligible difference when two hackers put their minds together. The fact that the target had been Apple was just an added bonus and in that moment she decided to message Trinity.

**Awake?**

**Plague already told me. Next you should try joyriding in a nuclear sub. Cracking into Apple is child's play.**

**I'm going to get a new phone and computer. I'll message you the new number when I get it.**

**Hmmm. Do at least try to stay out of trouble, then.** She swore she could hear an ounce of his occasional English snobbery, but she reminded herself that he was entitled to it more than most.

**It's trouble that always seems to follow me.** She wrote.

**All the same.** He concluded his message with a stupid little letter configuration that Plague had once told her was supposed to be someone sticking out their tongue, but she couldn't see any resemblance.

A sleep-deprived employee pulled the bars that had blocked the door of the Apple store to the side as Salander walked over to the storm drain, promptly dropping her old Palm into it before striding into the store.

It was the first time she had been in any official Apple store and she immediately decided she would rather go to the Mac Jesus store behind Milton Security for any future dealings with Apple. Bright and spacious, it was not the type of place someone like her would bother with on a regular basis.

She was thankful that the configurations she required were too complex to be bought directly in the store. Three days ago she had placed a pre-order online and was assure that what she needed would be available at the store when she went to pick it up. With a show of her recently renewed drivers license to one of the tech support employees, two computer boxes were placed in her arms with her iPhone added almost as an afterthought. The store was beginning to fill up considerably and Salander could see Blomkvist had just walked in as well to soak in the atmosphere that was the cult of Mac while carrying to cups of coffee.

At that moment another employee walked up wearing a fake salesmen smile. She wondered if they paid sales commissions here. "Find everything you were looking for?"

"Do you have a…" she glanced over to where Blomkvist had been standing, "32 gigabyte touch?" The man looked at her as if she had two heads but nodded anyways before grabbing one off a merchandise shelf that had been cordoned off. She couldn't recall the last time she made an impulse buy for another person as she rang everything up under Wasp Enterprises. Well, that might have been a lie; there had been that ratty metal Elvis Presley sign she had seen at a novelty shop in Strömgatan. But that had only made it as far as the dumpster after seeing Berger and Blomkvist walking arm in arm on Hornsgatan.

She tapped him on the shoulder as she walked by and he dutifully followed, holding out a cup of coffee before sheepishly noticing she didn't have any free hands. He could have been a gentleman and offered to carry the larger bag, but Salander would insist on being independent so he need not bother. He was just content he wasn't completely alone, even if his company wasn't of the chatty variety.

When they arrived at the train station they took seats at opposite ends of the bench and Blomkvist had to almost force the second cup of coffee into her hands as they waited. It was lukewarm but better than nothing; he had even remembered that she took hers black with one sugar cube.

The train arrived and they should in the doorway even though most the seats were empty. Two security officers walked by inspecting tickets, eyeing Lisbeth suspiciously before continuing on down the train talking quietly to each other.

"I don't suppose Apple originally planned to open an hour after midnight." He waited for the security guards to be a safe distance away before addressing her. For some reason he didn't think they would be very understanding if they just happened to overhear that the woman next to him had broken into Apple and had essentially reordered virtual time.

She gave him a crooked smile. "It hardly matters what time a store opens when you can easily change it."

He toed the bags that Salander placed on the floor. She gave him a death stare before he held opened his hands in surrender. "You never told me what was worth standing outside at minus sixteen for."

"A 24-inch polycarbonate iMac with a 2.6 gigahertz processor, a seventeen inch polycarbonate MacBook Pro with a potential for eight gigabytes of RAM and an iPhone."

"Why get an iMac if you're getting a laptop?"

"I owe Plague for finding Poison Pen. He needed a new computer so he gets a new computer." She shrugged and looked out the window at the rapidly passing subway stone. Blomkvist knew he probably wouldn't get anything else out of her for the night. It was nice that she wasn't purposely avoiding him anymore, but at times it still felt as if he were talking to a complete stranger.

The train crept into Slussen station just after two that morning, Salander and Blomkvist tossing their empty coffee cups into a bin at the top of the escalators before walking up the hill towards Fiskargatan. Salander didn't protest that he had chosen to see her home. She just walked briskly and left Blomkvist to gradually huff and puff his way up the stairs. She sat on the railing waiting for him while smoking her last cigarette, smirking at him.

"Laugh all you want, Lisbeth, but get back to me on that when you're forty." Now that was an interesting thought. Lisbeth Salander at forty. Neither of them could even begin to picture it. Even thirty was only two years away, and what a feat that would be.

What were you supposed to do when you turned thirty? Did you just wake up one day and start walking around like Cilla Norén in designer polo shirts with your hair tied back in a neat little ponytail? Salander didn't consider herself youthful by any means; on the contrary she felt almost timeless. Her childhood had been robbed from her and she had to make the choice to grow up or be left behind. She chose the former, but now she was stuck in another case of having to move on and this time she wasn't sure if she wanted to proceed.

So absorbed in her thoughts she plowed right into Blomkvist, who had stopped outside the door to her Fiskargatan apartment. At a loss for words, he nodded and turned around to head back down the hill. She suddenly remembered the iPod and dropped her things on the doorstep to chase after him.

She held out the box, looking at his feet as she spoke. "It has 32 gigabytes of memory as well as wi-fi access. Might come in handy some time."

"Lisbeth, this is-" He spoke as she spun on her heel and marched up the hill back to her apartment. He sighed, supposing he should have expected her not to stick around after willfully giving him such an expensive gift. He thought he could hear the entryway door slam shut behind her, but he simply shook his head and headed west on Svartensgatan.

Salander climbed the stairs to her fifth floor apartment, using the stairs as an ecuse to stomp around without anyone giving her grief. Her hands shook and she dropped her keys twice trying to open the door to her apartment. On her third try the door was wrenched open from the other side. Mimmi stood before her in a silk robe with an embroidered golden dragon and nothing else, her face filled with the gravest worry.

"What?"

"Holger Palmgren has been calling insistently for the last hour asking if I knew where you were." She looked over at the wall phone in the kitchen area as it began to ring. Salander dropped everything in the doorway before racing to the phone. "Something about a fire on-"

"Palmgren?"

"Lisbef!" She nearly jumped at the sound of his voice yelling into the phone. "Are you alright? Is Herr Blomkist alright?"

"I'm fine." _Blomkvist? _She dropped her jacket on the breakfast island and hopped on the counter. Suddenly she really needed a cigarette.

"What about Blomkist? Haf you seen him?"

"About ten minutes ago. Palmgren, why?"

"There was an explusion at Belfsmangatan . It's on all the newfs channels."

Salander placed her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and asked a shaken looking Mimmi to turn on the TV. From the living room the TV blared loud enough to wake the neighbors, but Salander only caught the last bit of it.

'…_Natural gas explosion shortly after midnight at what is believed to be the residence of journalist Mikael Blomkvist. Authorities have confirmed one fatality but have yet to release the identify of the victim.'_

Shit.

"Palmgren, I'll call you back in the morning."

"Lisbef? Lisbef!" He shouted as she unceremoniously hung up on her former guardian. Next she called Blomkvist but was greeted by his voicemail. She slammed the phone back into the cradle before picking up and throwing her jacket across the floor.

"Shit!" Where the sudden bout rage came from she couldn't pinpoint, but as she watched plumes of black smoke billowing from Bellmansgatan to the west, she made up her mind. Before she could stop herself she grabbed her jacket and was out the door. The wooden frame splintering as it slammed shut. She was going to have to chase Mikael all the way down the hill _again_.

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	2. Chapter 2

January 1st – 5th The Girl Who Knew Too Much

**Authors Note: I got nothing. Just review and you'll get chapter 3 all the more faster.**

**Disclaimer: No dinero is made in the production of this fanfiction.**

_January 1st - 3rd_

Salander jogged down Svartensgatan, her new phone pressed against her ear as she repeatedly dialed Blomkvist. The smoke was beginning to fade to a brilliant white and the smell wasn't so acrid anymore. She didn't know how either of them had missed it when they were walking towards Fiskargatan earlier, but it didn't matter now. Mikael's apartment had just exploded and contrary to the media reports it was not the result of a natural gas explosion; the entire block had recently been upgraded and there was no active gas line anywhere nearby. Someone wanted Mikael dead, but they had gotten someone else instead.

When she finally accepted she would never get a hold of Mikael over the phone she did the next best thing.

It took three rings for Annika to pick up. "Yeah?"

"Have you heard from Mikael recently?" Wide-awake at the mention of her brother, Annika sat up in bed and looked over at her sleeping husband before quietly carrying the phone into the kitchen.

She whispered into the phone as she heard a bedroom door creak open. "Lisbeth? Where's Mikael?" Damn, it was just the dog. No nosy in-laws were up yet.

Salander shoved a drunk out of the way and followed Sankt Paulsgatan west onto Bellmansgatan. "That's what I'm asking." Three fire trucks took up the entire lane and she had to climb up and over cars to get anywhere near the building. The police had pulled up on the other side of the trucks, but no one had dared enter the smoldering building.

"What's happening Lisbeth? I can hear sirens on your end."

Salander scanned through the crowd of residents wrapped in blankets. No Blomkvist here. "Someone blew up his apartment. One person was found dead"

"Mikael?"

Salander didn't recognize any faces here. She sat on the hood of a car looking south on Bellmansgatan. No one would be able to walk down the street without being spotted by her. She thought about climbing onto the catwalk above, but she couldn't find any access point to get to it.

"No. Not unless Mikael can go back in time."

"Figuerola then. She was on her way to clean out his apartment. Do you think…?"

"It makes more sense than Mikael. Annika, write down this number and call me back if you get a hold of Mikael. I'm going to try his number again."

Annika was silent before sighing loudly into the phone. Everything was just going to hell today. "I should probably call Erika…"

"No. Keep quiet for now. Wait for Erika to call you. I want to find Blomkvist before anyone starts jumping to conclusions."

Annika did not miss the fact that Lisbeth had reverted to addressing her brother by his surname. Maybe it was because of Berger. Annika had always suspected there was more than awkward friendship between her brother and Salander, but neither of them had ever said anything directly supporting her theory. She chose to let the topic rest in peace in this instance.

The dog began scratching at the treat drawer that Annika was leaning against and with a firm slap on the nose was sent skittering across the hardwood floor into her seven-year-old daughter's room. Three beds seemed to creak at once and her mother in-law started to cough violently. Annika groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. "The family is up now, I've got to go. Keep me up to date on Mikael please."

"Count on it." Salander pressed the large 'end call' button with her gloved finger only to realize that the touchscreen responded to body heat. Damn. She was going to have to go find some thermal glue for all her gloves when she had the time.

She reached into her coat pocket for her lighter and cigarette case, lighting one as she watched the last of the flames being put out. The police seemed unsure of their role in all of this; by now everyone in Stockholm was under the impression that a gas explosion had caused the blast. When the chaos was over she would have to do her own poking around and come to her own conclusions.

As she sat in silent observation of the damage, one of the cops came up to her and ordered her to put out the cigarette immediately, citing a possible gas leak in the neighborhood. She had half the mind to tell him all of Stockholm's first responders were idiots, but that would be breaking her vow of silence regarding police. Instead, she jumped off the hood and walked further down the street, listening to the man mutter on about firebugs always coming to watch the show.

Salander sat on a decrepit mailbox for the next two hours, hardly moving a muscle. By four that morning she had given up that Blomkvist would be stopping by his apartment. She was dead tired but as she walked back towards Götgatan she had a brilliant idea.

_Millennium_.

She could have kicked herself for not thinking of it sooner. If Blomkvist wanted to hide somewhere where he would be relatively undisturbed, it would be Millennium.

She climbed over a wrought iron fence and cut across the Södra Gymnasium grounds. Another block east and she was climbing the stairs behind the Greenpeace office up to Millennium. The security code was foolishly the last four numbers of the magazine's phone number. She found Blomkvist standing in the center of the bullpen with his eyes glued to the TV screen.

"Monica's dead." He seemed to be talking to the screen. The media had gone into all out hype mode; _She _onTV4 was currently taking the initiative in mourning the tragic death of Mikael Blomkvist.

Salander sat on Malm's desk on the just to outside his line of sight. "I know."

"I figured you would." He turned around to face her. "Gas leak. Can you believe that nonsense?"

Suddenly she gave him a crooked smile that seemed entirely out of her control and highly inappropriate given the circumstances. _Smart bastard,_she thought.

Blomkvist flicked the TV off. "I was actually about to go talk to Bublanski right when you walked in. I don't suppose you want to come?" She shook her head vigorously. That would still be in violation of her First Rule.

He smiled ruefully. "Now I just have to call a taxi," he patted down all of his pockets thoroughly, looking at the area around him as he did so, "With a phone I left at home."

Salander stayed on Malm's desk as Blomkvist climbed the stairs to the loft he and Erika shared as an office space. She didn't bother follow him; she could see every move he made from her vantage point.

Up in the loft she could hear Blomkvist pat his back pockets, finding he was also short his wallet. When Salander heard a box crash to the floor, she called out, "I could drive you."

He head popped over the rail of the loft. "You're not serious?" She just stared at him. There were many things Salander didn't do; joking was one of them.

"Someone tried to kill you this morning. You shouldn't trust anyone until we have more information." Blomkvist did not press her suddenly charitable mood. Instead he followed her out the door and on the street, moving through narrow back alleys that Salander had memorized not long after moving to Fiskargatan. Her bike was parked in the underground garage and didn't want to start until the seventh kick. Just by luck she had found the spare helmet she had taken from Sonny Nieminen at Bjurman's cabin. It was a less than ideal fit for Blomkvist's square head, but it would have to do.

The entire ride was hair-raising to say the least for Salander. Blomkvist was an awful passenger. With every bump he would nearly send them into a wheelie and he wiggled fare too much for her to be able to concentrate on where they were going. By the time they had pulled up to Svensk Polis she had vowed to herself never to let anyone ride bitch on her bike ever again. Blomkvist promised to call when everything was said and done and Salander had promised to bring Mimmi's car for the return trip.

As Salander rode off, Blomkvist walked down the familiar sunken steps to the central police station. As the door opened he was taken aback by the chaos that was ensuing. Words like 'failure' and 'crash' were being thrown around by men hunched over computers. No one had seemed to notice him walk in except Sonja Modig. She stared at him good and long before flicking her eyes to a TV bolted to the wall displaying the early morning news. She motioned for him to follow her.

"All hell's broken loose here."

"You don't say."

Modig opened the door to the office she shared with Jan Bublanski and motioned him in. "The entire police server crashed shortly after about three this morning. Everyone suddenly got the blue screen of death and the techs have no clue what to make of it. It could be a virus, could be a hacker, could be Y2K coming eight years late for all we know."

Blomkvist cut to the chase. "Sonja, I don't think that the explosion at my apartment was caused by a gas leak."

"No of course not. No one on the entire block has had a gas hook up for the last five years." At this statement Blomkvist was shocked. In matters concerning the past few years he had always been two steps ahead of Stockholm's finest. To see that they had finally caught up to him, well, he was impressed.

Sonja continued thoughtfully, "No, we knew the minute the news helicopters flew over that it wasn't a natural gas explosion. Arson has been combing through the debris for the last two hours and have since found a cell phone-"

"-I had left mine on the counter."

She continued on, "They found a pre-paid cell phone registered with the Belgian carrier Proximus."

It took Blomkvist a moment to put the pieces together. "Someone planted an IED in my apartment?"

Modig looked at her PDA, skimming through the briefing Bublanski had sent her from Bellmansgatan. "It was an almost textbook example of a classic IED as a matter of fact. They found it just inside where your front door used to be, so we suspect that a package was shoved through your mail slot and was detonated by the phone's timer function. We'll know more once Arson's done more scavenging."

She tucked her PDA into a pocket as a knock came at the door. A moment later the hulking figure of Jan Bublanski passed through the door, a sour expression on his face.

"Hello Mikael." He didn't smile as he dropped a plastic evidence bag on the desk sat down at his desk, the computer still in blue screen mode. The chair croaked has he leaned his elbows onto the desk separating them. He waved a hand for Modig to leave.

When the door clicked shut, he addressed Blomkvist bluntly. "CP Officer Figuerola didn't report for graveyard duty last night. I need you to tell me if she was in your apartment this morning."

"Yes."

Bublanski didn't look the least surprised. "And no one else was in your apartment for the entire evening?"

Blomkvist shrugged. "Just Monica and the sick fuck that blew her up I suppose."

The hardened investigator peered down his glasses at Blomkvist. His eyes had dark circles surrounding them and his clothes were a rumpled mess as he slumped back in his chair. He looked completely defeated. Bublanski could see the after effects of a rough break up that now had only compounded by the death of one party.

Mikael spoke up after a period of silence. "Was it quick?"

"I don't think she even knew."

Blomkvist seemed to nod to himself now that the numbness was giving way to unrelenting guilt; Monica had gone to his apartment because she knew he wouldn't be there to get in her way. Had he been home she wouldn't have even bothered to drop by.

The office phone started to ring as Bublanski gave Blomkvist a sympathetic look. "Bublanski. No, perfectly and wholly alive I can completely assure you. Not right now but I can pass a message along. All right. I'll have him get in touch."

As he hung up the phone, Bublanski had what almost came across as a mischievous glint in his eyes as he sat down. "Dragan Armansky. He insists that you relocate Milton's VIP safe house immediately. I highly suggest you take him up on that offer."

When Blomkvist continued to stare at the edge of the desk, Bublanski was reminded heavily of his attempted interviews with Salander after her capture. The only difference was Salander had shutdown out of principle; Mikael had just simply shut down.

"I appreciate the offer, Jan, but I don't think a private villa is going to stop someone with a background in explosives from coming after me in the long run."

"Well at the very least refrain from causing any undue attention onto yourself until this mess is settled." He looked up at the clock. Half past seven. He had been up since three that morning when the call came out that a body had been found a Bellmansgatan 1. "Mikael, there's a press conference scheduled in fifteen minutes. Can you leave a number for me to contact you?"

Blomkvist shrugged sheepishly as he got to his feet. "I'm afraid my mobile was also a casualty of the explosion. You'll have to use my Hotmail account to get in touch."

Bublanski nodded but was not in the least satisfied. However, he knew there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. Blomkvist was Blomkvist and was therefore going to do whatever the hell he wanted. Bublanski just hoped he wouldn't do anything stupid in the meantime.

They shook hands before parting in opposite directions. Blomkvist realized he also had no clue what either of Salander's phone numbers were. He thought of checking the phone book in the lobby but he knew Salander would never have her address or phone number published.

The low clouds hovering over most of central Stockholm had finally let loose. By a stroke of luck he noticed an older burgundy Honda parked directly across from him, cigarette smoke wafting out of a crack in the fogged up windows. He just couldn't resist walking up to the hood of the car and drawing a large smiley face on the windshield. Salander would be pissed.

The door locks clicked open and he clambered into the little Civic coupe. Even with the seat extended all the way back, his knees were still bent up slightly to his chest.

Salander started the ignition before pulling out of the spot and heading east. "Only you would have the balls to draw a face on my car."

He noticed her laptop had been running off the cigarette lighter, the screen black but on.

"Been keeping busy?"

"The police server is completely fucked-nothing can go in or out. I'm going to see if Plague has any ideas."

Salander had been sitting in her car outside the building for about an hour trying to scavenge what she could about the explosion. When she had booted her MacBook up all she had gotten was a black screen where the police server should have been. Even after forty-five minutes of fiddling with it she had gotten nowhere. Nothing could go in or out. Salander thought she could smell a rat.

* * *

><p>Plague lived in a shanty apartment small enough to rival Salander's former Lundagatan just above an abandoned camera shop. For Salander it was as good as him living in Göteberg; she never had an reason to be in the area unless it was of the upmost technical importance. Plus the drive had too many damn stoplights.<p>

Today might have been the first near social call she had ever paid him.

Salander had to drive around the block twice to find a parking space; the location was prime parking for those who had boats at the small marina two blocks down the street. Getting out of the car, she popped the trunk and pulled out Plague's payment for solving Poison Pen. Blomkvist seemed to struggle getting out such a small car, narrowly avoiding slipping on the now icy sidewalk as he tried to stand up from such a small car.

The building's security system had long since malfunctioned but so had the elevators, leaving the two of them to climb the stairs to Plague's third floor unit. They would have been quite the formidable foe to Plague's heft, she rationalized, and explained much of his borderline hoarding tendencies.

Salander banged on the door furiously. It almost looked as if no one was home until they could both feel an unmistakable bounce in the floor.

The door flung open, the sight of Plague's bare chest horrifying. "It's eight in the fucking morning, Wasp."

She shoved the box into his arms. "Is your computer still on?"

"Always."

"I need your opinion on something." She didn't ask and just ducked under Plague's arm into his poorly lit lair.

Plague eyed Blomkvist with uncertainty after Salander had so easily barged past him. The last time they had met, Blomkvist had Plague in a headlock when he caught him counter-bugging Millennium. There was no bad blood between them necessarily, but Plague was much like Salander; strangers were simply not allowed in his domain.

"She'll be out quick." He said as the door shut. Blomkvist just sighed and sat down in the hall, leaning against the shredded wallpaper.

Salander huffed and blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. The server was still jammed up with no hope of fixing in the near future. Plague came up behind her with his glasses on, still without a shirt.

"This place smells like shit." Plague responded by draping his arm across the top of her shoulders. It smelt terrible. "Put a fucking shirt on."

"The toilet backed up a couple days ago. The landlord is too afraid to come in here and fix it."

"I'd be afraid of your armpits too if I were him." She pointed to the screen. "I don't get this at all. It's like the whole system had a heart attack and there's a big clot in the middle of it all. Nothing can go in or out."

"So something is sucking up all of the servers bandwidth."

"I figured that much, but _what_?"

Plague pulled up a stool and nudged Salander out of the way. "I think I've actually seen this before." She gave him a look of disbelief. "Yeah, I think I have. It's actually horribly amateurish and simple. Some wannabe hacker forced the server to download the entirety of the Internet."

"You can't download the internet. It's infinite."

"The computer doesn't see it that way. It'll just keep puttering on until it achieves its goal."

"Or someone reformats it."

"Yeah. But since this is the police we're talking about, reformatting the system isn't a viable option. Just think of all the data and info they would lose." He looked up at Salander, still leaning onto the desk staring at the Svensk logo. She really didn't give a rat's ass about how much information the police lost when they eventually had to reboot the system. She just wanted access into the system that someone had just gone into and completely fucked up. It was the highest crime against the true hackers of the world and she did not take it lightly.

Salander clapped Plague on the back hesitantly. He had just reduced her virtual migraine to just a simmering headache. Now she knew what she was dealing with, but now she realized that until the light bulb went off in someone's head to kill the switch on the server she would just have to sit tight and wait. The thought irritated the hell out of her all over again and she kicked a trashcan as she charged out.

Blomkvist knew when to hold his tongue as Salander stomped down the three flights of stairs. It had started to rain again outside and the car slid on patches of ice as they made their way towards Fiskargatan. He was surprised Salander hadn't kicked him to the curb yet but wasn't about to protest; there was nowhere else to go. He couldn't burden Annika's already bursting at the seams household, no matter how willingly she would accept him into her house He couldn't stay with Berger; Beckman had always given him the creeps. He'd be damned if he went to cower away in Armansky's safe house either.

They exchanged no words when Salander pulled into her personal underground garage. Her bike leaned against the wall and was still slightly wet from her return trip from dropping Blomkvist off at the police station. Next to it was a hefty sledgehammer that looked too heavy for her to pick up, let alone swing. He was afraid to ask what it was for. She killed the ignition and grabbed her now dead laptop. As they climbed yet another flight of stairs, Blomkvist realized how exhausted he truly was, wanting nothing more than to fall face down into Salander's king-sized bed. _Keep dreaming_, he told himself.

When Salander turned the key to her apartment, she hesitated. It had finally dawned on her that she was willingly inviting him into her apartment. There was something strangely domestic about the situation and she wasn't entirely comfortable with it. She mentally shook her head, reminding herself she was simply paying him a debt and that there was nothing of _that_ nature involved.

Mimmi had already left for work when they walked in. She had not left yet for Paris; her collection of shoes was still neatly arranged in the entrance hall and her silk dragon robe still hung from the corner of the bedroom door. Salander realized that she had no clue what to do now that Blomkvist was in her apartment. She pondered the harm of leaving him to his own devices while she worked.

"Do you have a spare room? Preferably one furnished with a bed." He smiled at the irony of the statement.

She looked at him and saw the dark circles under his eyes. Suddenly she felt just as exhausted as he, but she had work to do before she would allow herself that small privilege. She pointed to the master bedroom. Blomkvist just stood there looking at her.

She put her laptop on the charger and carried it over to the window seat overlooking Gamla Stan. "Go ahead, just keep your clothes on." Once booted up she stared at her desktop. Something was seriously off.

"Mikael!"

His head poked out from the door.

"You left your laptop in your apartment, right?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"So logically it should have been destroyed by the fire."

"Yes."

She turned the screen to face him. "Your laptop is still online."

He padded out to see what she was talking about. Sure enough, _MikBlom HD_ was alive, well, and certainly not fire damaged.

"Is it being used? Can you trace it?"

"It's being used, but the Internet is offline so I can't locate a source."

Blomkvist nodded to himself. Salander went back to ignoring him; contently banging on her keyboard to create codes he would never understand. When he had once again shuffled off to the bedroom, Lisbeth pulled up the Hacker Republic page. Bob the Dog and Bambi were on.

**I need a job done.**

**Ask and ye shall grant**. Bambi wrote.

**I need someone to monitor this hard drive for any internet activity and trace wherever it connects.** She uploaded the drive to the chat page.

**Sounds interesting. What's going on?** Trinity logged on.

**Computer that supposedly was destroyed in an explosion is being toted around. Probably by whoever did it.**

**You get into the weirdest situations, Wasp.** Bob wrote.

**Can you guys do it?**

**Sure. It'll cost you**. Bambi wrote.

**I can pay. Just get me results first.**

**Will do. So did anyone hear that some noob shut down the entire Stockholm police server?**

**Details?** Trinity typed back.

**Apparently they…** Salander logged off as they started a heated debate on the intelligence level of someone who would jam a police system in such a way. Salander was starting to think it was a damn smart move if it was connected to recent events. She continued to watch as the_MikBlom HD_ imposter scrolled through Blomkvist's copies of Dag Svensson's notes for an hour until they logged off. It felt like a taunt to Salander.

Salander left her laptop on the window seat and stood up. It was just after nine in the morning. She debated whether sleep or coffee would be the route to go. Coffee could keep her going on autopilot for a few more hours, but there was nothing else to do. Plus Blomkvist was snoring away in the master bedroom.

She looked at the couch longingly. A black leather three-seater, she could completely stretch out on it and only take up two cushions. She looked at the bedroom door. _Nooo...couch._ With that, she flopped down and hissed under her breath. The leather felt like ice. After fifteen minutes of beating the cushions into place she just said fuck it and walked into the master. Blomkvist was still obliviously snoring so she figured it was safe enough to strip and put on something more comfortable before climbing onto the very edge of the bed.

* * *

><p>It was dark outside when Salander awoke to the feel of a soft jab on her shoulder. Instantly she sat bolt upright in bed. Blomkvist was lying on his side, staring at her intently.<p>

"A new tattoo?"

Salander didn't respond, giving him an acid look.

"Hiding a bullet hole with a bullet hole." He chuckled. "That's one tattoo I know the meaning to now."

A ping sound could be heard from the living room. Salander's head snapped up and before Blomkvist could ask what it was she had sprinted from the room. With a sigh of resignation, he followed her out.

There was a flurry of movement of which he had never seen come from Salander. One second she was kneeling in front of her computer clicking away, next she was in the entrance hall trying to put a boot and a jacket on at the same time. She didn't so much as look at him as she sprinted out the door, her steps thundering down the stairs. _What the hell was that all about?_ For just this once, he didn't feel entirely at fault for another one of her sudden disappearances.

He walked over to her still open computer, figuring that that had been the source of the ping and Salander's sudden agitation.

On screen was a two-line conversation with someone calling himself SixofOne. At least he thought it was a man.

**Internet on **_**MikBlom**_** just got a hit at coordinates 5918′53″N 18°4′19″E, If you hurry you can catch them.**

Next to the chat window, Salander had opened up Google maps and plugged in the coordinates. At 12:38am, someone had logged onto a Wi-Fi connection at the Medborgarplatsen tunnelbana. And Salander was right on their heels.

The ice along Götgatan was treacherous on her CB350, but Salander made it to Medborg within minutes. She pulled out her iPhone as she locked her helmet to the bike. The laptop Wi-Fi connection was still going strong in the tunnelbana twenty feet below her.

The escalator had locked up with the cold. Salander took the slide route down the center to the disbelief of those using the frozen stairs. She looked around as the signal failed. A train had just pulled up and Salander wasted no time hopping on just as the doors shut.

Salander realized she had no profile to go by for searching. She started with the most obvious; someone carrying a laptop or laptop bag. Probably a male between ages 35 and 55. Salander eyed several suspects suspiciously, but they didn't quite feel right to her. She cruised up and down the aisle, looking over everyone, but to no avail. For now, she admitted defeat in what was but a small battle.

She got off at Bromma-Stockholm airport and sat in the station until a return train arrived. She was still seething an hour later when the train pulled into the Medborgarplatsen station. When she got back to her bike someone had stolen her helmet but neatly wrapped the chain through her wheel spokes. No way she was going to ride that thing back home with so many police still crawling around the day after new years.

Salander huffed and pulled the hood of her jacket over her eyes as she set off down the poorly lit Östgögatan towards home. Most of the shops were barred up at night and a shady group of men stood smoking on street corners. One of them was holding _her_ helmet.

_Consequences, consequences._

She decided to run for it. They were bulky, which meant she would have speed on her side. They weren't looking at her, so she was confident she could come up from behind and surprise them. Here goes nothing.

She slammed into the one holding her helmet with such force he toppled, the helmet rolling as Salander scooped it up and bolted west towards Götgatan. The other two were hot on her tail as she cut through the garden of a mosque, trampling flowerbeds underfoot. It seemed she had vastly underestimated their speed as she vaulted over a fence onto the main drag. She could see her bike but she could hear the goons thundering behind her. _Shit._

Not bothering to fasten the helmet, she swung a leg over the saddle and kicked furiously. No luck. Another kick and she found herself and the bike falling onto the cobblestones, a thick arm clotheslining her across the neck as she went down.

* * *

><p>It was well after four in the morning when Salander stumbled into the elevator. Her helmet was still on her head. She wanted to prolong the inevitable moment when she would have to pry it off past her broken nose. The goons had given her a merciless kicking while she had been pinned under the bike, shattering the face shield of the helmet before crushing her nose. She was sure she had also broken a finger, the second joint of her ring finger black and blue where it had caught between the left handlebar and clutch.<p>

The door to the residence of V. Kulla was unlocked as she dragged her left leg lamely behind her. Blomkvist was slumped over on the sofa, asleep with the TV on. _Men_, Salander thought. She opened the freezer quietly, tossing the entire contents of the ice tray into a plastic bag before dropping it into the gap where her face shield once was. The weight of the bag was almost unbearable, but her face became numb soon enough.

Pulling the helmet off, she found much of her face caked in blood and her nose had started to bleed again. Fine scratches from the breaking glass were etched everywhere. After a light wash she still looked like shit, but at least she was dripping blood anywhere. When she walked back out into the main room, Blomkvist had completely fallen over onto the sofa. She took pity on him and threw a folded up blanket at him before walking into the bedroom, draping a cloth across the pillow so not to soil it while she slept.

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	3. Chapter 3

_January 4th - 6th_

Thirty-two thousand feet safely above the southern most tip of Sweden, Lieve Petersen booted up a 2005 Mac PowerBook belonging to none other than the acclaimed financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist. She smiled. The media was still in a frenzy over the sudden death of the PowerBook's former owner. The whole thing had been so easy it was almost disappointing. She have thought such an esteemed journalist ragtag investigator such as Blomkvist would have noticed the little brown parcel Petersen had left behind after taking the laptop.

It had been pure luck that Blomkvist had walked into the apartment when he did. Petersen only half expected him to get back before time was up. She had set the timer to go off after fifteen minutes after she had ransacked the apartment, not really caring whether or not Blomkvist got there or not; the laptop was the key aspect.

But Petersen had made a grave error. She had forgotten all about his tech savvy Lisbeth Salander. It came as a complete to see Salander sliding down the center of the escalators at T-Central just as she had slipped Blomkvist's laptop back into her bag. Petersen was nearly convinced the jig was up. Yet Salander had passed within two feet of her on the train three times but had never cast a second glance at her. She had made it all the way to Bromma-Stockholm, disembarking the train right in front of Salander, still going completely unnoticed.

Petersen looked out into the night through a first class window. Approaching from below were the Netherlands. After that came Belgium.

* * *

><p>Over the course of the night, Salander was roused from bed several times. Her nose had started bleeding again and completely soaked through the cloth she placed over her pillows. A pair of cotton balls up the nose had solved the problem nicely and she went back to bed. An hour later a splitting headache erupted that was bad enough for her to ponder whether or not to go to the ER for the briefest of moments. With twice the recommended dose of ibuprofen from her sparse medicine cabinet the headache was reduced to a mild pulse and the thought of hospital treatment forgotten. It wasn't until her nose had managed to soak through an additional four pairs of cotton balls that she said fuck it, preferring to just hold a ratty shirt up to her nose and mercilessly beat the keys on her laptop from the safety of her room as the sun began to rise.<p>

At half past three in the afternoon Salander had still not come out the master and Blomkvist was becoming slightly worried. Several times that night he could here her bumping around in the bathroom before padding back to her bedroom. He had also awoken to find small droplets of dried blood leading from the entrance hall to the bathroom.

He was slightly relieved to find that while her laptop was in her room, the charger was not. So it became a sort of waiting game for Blomkvist. Eventually she would come out of hiding to recharge her computer battery.

Sometime an hour or so later keys began to rattle in the door.

"Lis-"

Miriam Wu caught sight of Blomkvist and instantly felt embarrassed. "Hi."

"Hi." Blomkvist stoically replied.

"Is Lisbeth around?"

"Bedroom." Mimmi relaxed.

Miriam didn't thank him, just breezed right past him. Blomkvist was not prepared by the very high-pitched shriek that she emitted the moment she opened Salander's door.

"What the FUCK happened to your face?"

"I don't want to talk about it." Came Salander's mumbled reply.

"Come off of it. Your nose looks like an eggplant." Mimmi plopped herself down on the edge of the bed on the opposite side of Salander, staring at the screen. It looked like she had gotten back into her strange math hobby.

"I got kicked in the face."

"By who?"

"A size 13 men's boot."

Mimmi held one of the old shirts Salander had been using. "There's a lot of blood here." Lisbeth just shrugged and lit a cigarette. Almost most involuntarily, Mimmi reached out to touch her nose but her handed was quickly batted away by Lisbeth's.

"You should really go to a hospital for that."

"The bleeding's stop so I don't see the point."

"Umm. The fact that your nose it completely bent out of shape. Can you even breathe?"

Salander responded by shutting her laptop and slidding out of bed, pulling on a shirt with the widest shoulders she could find before padding quietly out of the bedroom, Mimmi right on her heels. Blomkvist was lounging on the couch reading the front page of the newspaper and didn't try to hide his flinch when he saw her.

Salander's nose had been almost flattened against her face, giving Blomkvist the feeling that even the most skilled surgical hands probably couldn't completely right the damage done. Her face been scratched like hell and she had a noticeable limp in her left leg. He would make sure to ask her what in the hell she had gotten into once Wu left.

Lisbeth walked into the kitchen, hoisting herself up onto the counter. She offered a cigarette to Mimmi before throwing the rest of the pack at Blomkvist while he was looking in the opposite direction. It didn't even manage to fly half the distance.

"When are you going back to Paris?"

"I leave on the eight pm flight tonight out of Bromma." Salander's eyes flashed briefly but whatever emotion they showed was unreadable.

She took a long drag off her cigarette, asking nonchalantly when her next break was.

"Whenever you feel like dragging your ass down to Paris. I'm completely over all the security regulations between here and there."

"You think a tatted up freak like me would have an easier time?"

"Just pull some rings out of your face and no one will give you a second glance."

"I would still fail the metal detectors." She said, tapping her head where a steel plate had been embedded last April. Drumming her fingers on the coffee maker, she used Blomkvist's cold morning cup of coffee for an ashtray. Salander found that smoking had little substance to it without the use of her nose.

When it was clear Lisbeth wouldn't go on, Mimmi gave her an apologetic look before walking back towards the bedroom. There she retrieved the silk dragon robe that had been hanging from the doorframe and her spare sets of clothes. Salander hopped down from the counter, following her into the entrance hall where she had managed to somehow pack up all seven sets of shoes into a neat little carrying box. _Only Mimmi_.

Salander shut the door behind her as she and Mimmi stepped out into the hall.

"I'll bite; why is Mikael Blomkvist in your apartment after his exploded?"

"Because his exploded." Salander answered bluntly. "He's…a friend."

"Like I'm your friend, right?"

"He's saved my ass so many times I'm still indebted to him." Salander shrugged, not quite answering the question. It wasn't something she could answer in a concise manner so she chose to avoid it.

Mimmi looked back at Salander as she leaned back against the front door before walking up and gently brushing her lips against Lisbeth's.

"I'm still not in love with you."

"Keep it that way and we won't have any problems."

Mimmi waved as she walked down the stairs and Salander wondered if a trip to Paris would be such a bad thing. Now she was stuck alone with Blomkvist. She promised herself the week before she had no feelings left for him. Now it was time put that promise to the test.

She sat down on the stairs and thought about all the Internet hits she had been tracking from Blomkvist's computer. A few seemed to come from the ocean so Salander reasonably deducted that who ever had blown up Mikael's apartment had been on the train with her all the way to Bromma-Stockholm before flying out. Salander could not think of anyone suspicious she had seen on the train at Medborgplasten that had gotten off at Bromma. The fact that Salander didn't have a reliable profile to go off of disturbed her and a little voice at the back of her mind hoped whoever it was would come back for round two. This time, Salander would win.

The doorframe groaned where it had been split the night before when Salander slipped back into the apartment. Blomkvist gave for a questioning look that she chose to ignore before grabbing her wallet from her room and her car keys off the kitchen counter. She left her pack of cigarettes on the coffee table but emptied her ashtray into the garbage chute as she took the elevator down to her garage. The right mirror of her bike had broken off when the bike fell, the passenger foot peg bent in the opposite direction. The car was freezing when she climbed in so she lit a cigarette while waiting for it to heat up before backing out onto Fiskargatan.

Bits of salt and sand were clinging from the mud flaps of her car by the time she had parked in front of the seven eleven a block from Millennium. In it she grabbed two large coffees, a bag of coffee grounds, milk, a box of cheap thumbtacks, and three comprehensive maps of central and northern Europe. The cashier overcharged for the coffees and didn't look the least apologetic. The temperature had improved greatly since new years, now hovering at about five below and turning the roads to salty slush. She was supposed to visit Palmgren today.

Blomkvist was standing in the garage looking at her bike. Salander resisted the urge to slap him when he picked up the broken mirror. She slammed the car door forcefully behind her, snatching the broken mirror out of his hand.

"Did you crash your bike before or after you had your nose smashed flat with a size 13 boot?"

"Here are the rules. Leave all forms of transportation alone unless you ask. Don't play with my computer or even look at it. Don't read through open mail or legal papers. Nod. Now."

When he did she have him a crooked non-smile and handed him a coffee before hobbling away to the elevator. She sipped hers, making a face when she realized she had grabbed his. Mikael came to the same conclusion and they awkwardly swapped cups as the elevator opened onto her floor.

Salander immediately got to work, dropping her coffee onto the kitchen table and spreading out a map covering the countries to the southwest of Sweden. Between eleven pm the previous night and half an hour ago Mikael's laptop had accessed public Wi-Fi ports seven times. Blomkvist watched intently as she stuck pins across a mini-map of Brussels.

"When I was with Modig and Bubble they said that the detonator was a Belgian pre-paid."

Salander's head snapped up. "What carrier?"

"Proximal or something like that."

"About three hours ago your laptop was on at a McDonald's across from the mobile store Proximus." Salander pounded into the keys furiously. "I'll see if I can cross reference anyone that's paid repeat visits to the store in the last month."

Blomkvist nodded, finishing the last of his coffee before throwing it down the garbage chute outside of Salander's apartment. When he came back she was in the main police server, skimming through recent evidence logs. There were only five entries in the entire database after the server had been reformatted. Office Jan Bublanski had logged one cell phone into evidence, but it was noted it had been too damaged to recover a serial number. The phone looked to be several years old and instantly Salander cancelled the cross-reference. It wouldn't be of any use if the phone was several years old.

The computer chirped. "They're on again." She looked at the address. "Shit."

"What?"

"Train station in Amsterdam."

The laptop went offline again. "The police bulletin board just posted Figuerola's memorial service for tomorrow at ten. Bubble is also hounding Modig with his sorrows about you not answering emails but the email he sent is the same as the bulletin so it doesn't really matter if you reply or not. He also wants to get in touch with you again regarding your exact whereabouts on New Years but really wants to pester you about what they didn't find in your apartment when they were picking through it."

"That was quick."

"There wasn't much of her left so I imagine that sped up the funeral arrangement process somewhat."

Blomkvist glared at her bare, bruised shoulders. "That's not what I meant. I mean Bublanski and Modig seem to have a few ideas of what happened that aren't complete crap. They actually seemed a lot more collected when I went to see them yesterday morning."

"I have more than they do. All they have is a burnt up phone while I have your virtual hard drive being traced around Europe." She looked up at him from her window seat. "So are you going or not?"

"I have nothing to wear." He motioned to his pair of jeans and heavy sweater. "I've been stuck in this for the last three days."

"If I give you six thousand krona will you go away for a few hours?"

"Trying to get rid of me?"

"No I'm going to go see Palmgren and Mimmi took the spare key." Blomkvist threw his hands up in exasperation before walking into the bathroom and turning on the shower. Salander decided she would drop him off at AB Nordiska on the other side of the Riddarfjärden before doubling back towards Ersta. She hoped it would keep him busy while she dropped in on Palmgren for his weekly annihilation at chess.

He walked out of the bathroom a half hour later, his hair still glistening and ruffled. She handed him six thousand krona and told him to spend as much as he wished. She doubted he would spend more than two.

It was back to raining when they pulled up on Hamngatan. When he stepped out she gunned the car before he could turn around and demand to be taken somewhere less extravagant.

She parked her car on Erstagatan and could see Palmgren reading comfortably inside of the covered porch of the assisted living home. She rapped on the door lightly with a hand, her hood drawn as low as possible over her face. Palmgren was no fool; he could tell she was hiding something and gasped when she finally lowered her hood.

Salander expected no less, but was surprised by the hand that instantly went to the side of her face where the bruising wasn't so bad.

"Just say it."

"What do you think I should say?"

"That I'm the worse case you've ever had to deal with."

"You were never just a case Lisbeth. You are Lisbeth and you are by far the most loyal and interesting of the many children I have fostered over the last thirty years." Palmgren looked at her with a kindness she had never know from any other person. "Do you need any ice for this?"

She shook her head before sitting down on the chair facing Palmgren's, pulling out the familiar wooden chessboard from her satchel. He smiled at his formal ward when she gave him first move, knowing that there would never come a day when he would beat her.

"How is Blomkvist?"

"Alive." She flicked his pawn clear off the table. "How's group living?"

"Terribly boring. I'm the only one here that doesn't need a wheelchair and everyone here sleeps away eighteen hours of the day."

Lisbeth purposely ignored his badly played knight. "I don't see why they force you to stay here. I mean, I do, but you're too self sufficient to be stuck in one of these places."

"If I had another stroke alone, I may not be so fortunate in finding help. No, I think this is the best I can get." She gave him a blank expression; one he knew usually involved plotting. "And don't you dare try to set up a fund to have me moved either. I like most of these old coots when they're conscious."

She quickly took down his queen and rook in back to back moves. "You should try playing with more than just a first intention. Otherwise I'm just going to keep obliterating you." By the twenty-eighth move, Lisbeth had Palmgren pinned down with no way out.

Palmgren leaned back in his chair as Lisbeth packed up the board. "Teleborian is due for court in a few days."

Lisbeth said nothing.

"Are you going to testify?"

"No."

"Well I can't say I expected you to say yes."

"Are you?"

"I may drop in. I want to watch the bastard squirm. He's not getting off lightly with the charges they've put to him in any case." Lisbeth nodded. She remembered the look on his face at her trial when Bublanski had escorted him out in handcuffs. Nine thousand kiddie porn pictures later he would be getting a minimum of ten years. She hoped, in vain, that at least two of those would be spent strapped down in a stimulus free environment. _Payback's a bitch._

Salander stayed for another hour before leaving. Palmgren was genuinely happy, and that was all that mattered to her.

She found Blomkvist leaning on a railing just outside AB Nordiska with just three bags. She honked at him once to get in, revving the engine threateningly.

"Fucking hell. Why did you have to drop me off there?"

"Did you pick up anything for the funeral?" He held up one bag. Salander nodded. The sun was just above the horizon and everything seemed to have twice the glare as normal. Slussen posed quite the challenge, Salander vowing to buy a pair of cheap sunglasses as soon as possible. Milton Security rose in ominous concrete gray just on the other side of the interchange. She wondered if Armansky had gone home yet.

When they were home, there had been no recent Wi-Fi connections from Blomkvist's computer. It surprised Salander; she had noticed the thief had a very strict routine. Get on some method of transportation, find a fast food joint with Wi-Fi afterwards, log on, read through three Swedish tabloids, log off and repeat a few hours later. It only suggested that this person was on the move again, the idea bothering Salander immensely.

Blomkvist poked his head into the living room, "You don't go for fresh food very often, do you?"

"It just spoils before I eat it, so no." Lisbeth lit a cigarette from her spot on the window seat. The Hacker Republic was sadly empty so she opened up the police server. Nothing interesting. Then as a last resort she looked into Milton. Surprisingly quiet as well. Finishing her cigarette, she decided to go piece her poor Honda back together. Blomkvist was still in the kitchen contemplating if he wanted regular or hawaiian Billy's so she figured she could escape unnoticed if she didn't hobble around too much.

Upon inspection, she found the right mirror was really a lost cause, but she duct taped it back on just to keep it looking legal. The peg just needed a good hammering to put back in place and the tank had a dent she would just have to deal with. Overall, the bike had gotten off pretty good for being dumped on the cobblestones.

She looked at the sledgehammer she had Plague dig up for her. Tomorrow would be perfect to test it out. Hefting it into her arms, she popped the trunk and dropped it in before dragging herself off to the elevator.

Mikael was leaning against the kitchen island when Salander walked past him and tossed her keys on the counter by the coffee maker.

"Hawaiian or regular?"

"Neither. I'm going to bed."

After one last check on the computer there was still nothing. Frustrated, she carried laptop and charger into the bedroom, setting the volume as high as it could go. Any hits while she was asleep she wanted to know about ASAP. She realized her iPhone was also dead and plugged that in, but there was a next to zero chance of anyone calling her. Shit. Annika.

"Mikael!"

His walked in carrying a plate of the Hawaiian. She threw the phone and charger at him. "Annika wants an update. Just hold the top left button to turn it on." With that, Salander stripped and slide into bed. Tomorrow was definitely going to be bloody laundry day. The last thing she heard was the crackling shriek of Annika over the poor speakerphone.

* * *

><p>Salander woke to the sound of an electronic ping and a body hitting the floor sometime after seven that morning. A McDonald's in Götberg. Shit. Salander fell back against the pillows as Blomkvist hauled himself up off the floor.<p>

"Erika is back."

"Did you put the phone the charger?"

"Yes. Annika says thank you."

"For what?"

"I haven't the foggiest clue." Lisbeth looked at him, trying to figure out if he was being sarcastic or not. _It's too early for this shit._

"There was a hit in Götberg but there's nothing I can really do but keep tracking the computer. At this point I think they may be working their way back to Stockholm now that the news is out that your alive." She stood and across the room, groping blindly in her wardrobe for clothes.

"Are you going to the service?"

"I'll be nearby." She said cryptically. Blomkvist suddenly had an image of Salander sitting in a surveillance van with sensors and wiretaps surrounding the area for the slightest disturbance. Sometimes he wondered why she had only been a researcher for Milton when she so obviously suited for nearly any type of action. She could move without being noticed and was a master of disguise. She reminded him vaguely of a Bond girl, but with a fetish for the color black.

Water started to run in the bathroom adjacent her office. For the longest time he just laid there in bed, listening to the shower and staring at the computer. It had been beeping consistently. Coordinates were popping up all over the screen in new windows, each modest movement. He thought about the risk of using her computer to look them all up.

He eyed the door for no reason, still listening to making sure the water was running. Scooting over to the nightstand, he opened up Google maps and pasted the coordinates in. The entire X2000 line from Götberg to Stockholm was lit up with hits every minute. It was a three-hour ride. Who ever had his laptop was just barely entering the first hour of the journey. Suddenly the water shut off and Blomkvist hurriedly tried to click all the boxes back into their original places on the screen.

The bathroom door did not open for another 20 minutes. When he finally could hear the shuffle of barefeet, he launched himself back to the right side of the bed and grabbed a random book off the floor.

"I didn't know you could understand astrophysics upside down."

He looked up at her crooked smile, amazed at the transformation that had taken place. Copious amounts of makeup turned the fresh bruising to something that looked several weeks old, though there wasn't much to do for the blood vessels that had ruptured in her eye. A few eye drops had given her eyes a more uniform bloodshot appearance that could easily be explained by her computer savvy ways.

"You look good."

She tensed at the compliment. _No! You don't accept compliments from Kalle Blomkvist!_ Ripping open a new package of Marlboros she knelt down in front of the computer.

"You've been on my computer."

Blomkvist didn't deny it. He wasn't surprised that she could tell. He turned the book right side up_. What the fuck?_

"You can understand all this?" She gave a curt nod before shutting the lid of the laptop.

"You should get dressed. I want to catch the X2000 before the funeral." She gathered up the full ashtrays that were scattered around the room before walking out of the room. The front door slammed and Blomkvist reluctantly rolled out of bed, not looking forward to the memorial service.

Salander's car had just pulled under the garage when he stepped out of the shower. When he was finally dressed Salander was perched on the window seat looking out across to Gamla Stan while nibbling on a donut. There was a box with five left over on the kitchen counter next to a second cup of coffee. He chose a lemon twist and grabbed a coffee before walking into the living room. Salander was back on the laptop.

"What exactly do they do on my computer?"

"Read through your files mostly. Then they go read some Swedish tabloids and newspapers. No email, no social sites, nothing that requires a log on."

"Smart."

"Irritating." She shut the laptop and left it on the window seat. "Let's go. The train gets here in half an hour."

At twenty to nine, the X2000 pulled into Stockholm Central Station. Wearing an olive green retro-punk jacket and laptop tucked safely away into a generic black backpack, Lieve Petersen looked like the average university student coming back to Stockholm after the Christmas hiatus. Her hair had been dyed golden blonde with matching hair extensions put in. She had bought three more cell phones from Proximus with cash, but wasn't in any rush to use them all at once. Petersen liked Stockholm and certainly didn't want to go flying back to Belgium so soon.

Hiking the bag a few inches up her shoulders, she set her sights on the McDonald's across the street from the train station, but nearly stopped dead in her tracks when she caught sight of Lisbeth Salander sitting leisurely on a bench, apparently stuck between people watching and texting. Twice in a row was no co-incidence, yet Petersen could think of no way that Salander could have tracked her to both T-Central and the train station. It was uncanny. But today Lieve felt cocky, deciding she would walk right by Salander before continuing on to across the street. Salander didn't even look up as she passed by.

She was in a damn good mood after that, almost strutting into the McDonalds. Petersen ordered a tall coffee with a large fry, not caring for the strange looks the pimple-faced teen behind the counter gave her. With her order in hand, she slid onto a stood facing out towards Vasagatan and opening up Blomkvist's laptop. At first she just skimmed through 'The Section.' After that she perused the list of names included in Dag Svensson's book. A few names stuck out and she scribbled them down on a napkin. Next she scanned through SMP, Afonbladet, and Expressen. Nothing interesting. Tossing half the fries in the trash, Petersen walked out of the McDonalds, bumping into Mikael Blomkvist. He apologized profusely and offered a friendly hand before taking a seat in the chair she had just been occupying.

At nine fifteen, Lisbeth called marched over across the street to the McDonald's to collect Blomkvist, yet again having no luck in finding someone of reasonable suspicion. According to Blomkvist, no one had brought a computer or computer bag into the McDonalds.

When they were safely in the car passing driving through the Söderledstunneln, Salander told him there had been a hit at ten to nine.

"Shit. I must have just missed them, then."

Salander didn't make any movement that indicated she heard him as they took the highway turn off to Woodland Cemetery. Salander had known many people who were now buried or interred here. She dropped Blomkvist off a safe distance from the group of mourners gathered in the newer area of the cemetery designated for fallen police and military. She had no business in this area, driving off to the older, densely wooded part of the cemetery.

She looked around carefully for any signs of people in the area before turning off the car. Popping the trunk, she lugged the twenty-pound sledgehammer out of the trunk. She wasn't sure of the distance and had only a poorly labeled map to go by, but soon enough she found the grave she had been looking for. _Aleksandr Zalachenko. 1940 – 2006_. With a single swing, she split the stone marker in two. Then four, then eight. She swung until it the marker was reduced to pebble-like fragments and then kicked them all across the lawn. The fucker deserved an unmarked grave.

Dragging the sledgehammer back to the car, Salander was completely spent. Next she would visit her mother's grave, but was remorseful for not buying flowers.

Berger stood back from the main group of mourners, looking at the hole that had been dug in the muddy earth. Under a tent Figuerola's casket had been draped with the Swedish flag and had a ring of flowers placed at the foot of it. A car engine could be heard driving up the main cemetery road and Berger looked over in time to see Blomkvist climbing out a 2002 burgundy Honda civic. The driver looked too short to even reach the pedals, but managed to floor it all the way to the old cemetery.

She heard his footsteps behind her.

"Two funerals in a week, Micke." He put an arm resolutely around her shoulders.

"I know. Not a good new year so far for any of us."

"Where have you been staying?"

"Lisbeth's."

They just stood there holding each other companionably until Bublanski walked down the hill to quietly announce the service was about to start. Had the situation been any different Blomkvist would have laughed at how his service cap floated on his thick poof of hair.

With great reluctance, Mikael and Berger broke apart long enough to walk towards a pair of folding chairs at the back of the pack. Neither really paid attention to anything being said by the minister. There was no family at the service, but Blomkvist supposed the some twenty Säppo agents in the first and second rows were close enough; Figuerola lived for her team.

A three-gun volley followed after the service. When the tent was deconstructed and the casket lowered into the ground Greger Beckman honked his horn as he sat in his parked Mercedes off the main road. Lisbeth was nowhere to be seen. Berger asked if he needed a ride anywhere, but Blomkvist just shook his head and started down the path towards the old cemetery.

Some two hundred meters down the lane he could see her car parked at a four-way intersection, but it was void of any signs of Salander as far as he could see. The windows were clear and suggested that the car had likely been there for most of the service. With further inspection of the area he found little boot prints leading east through sparsely scattered aspen trees.

He didn't see her until he walked by her, so well concealed next to a bush while leaning against an aspen. Her hood was up and she seemed to be just staring at the headstone in front of her. _Agneta Sophia Salander. 1956 – 2004. _Blomkvist sunk down to her level, putting a hand on her shoulder just as he had two years ago at the funeral. She refused to acknowledge him just as she had two years ago.

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	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4 Women Who Hate Men

**A/N – All right, this is hot off the press. Sorry if I gave anyone false hope when I posted this last night and took it down, but I wanted to add a bit more to the chapter. Probably contains errors and some discrepancies in style. It is a bit shorter than the others, but hopefully you still find it decent.**

_January 7th_

The doorbell to a fifth floor Östermalm penthouse rung persistently just after eleven, the sound bouncing off the high ceilings and marble flooring loud enough to wake the napping Dr. Peter Teleborian. His monitoring bracelet's red light pulsed a steady beat; the transmitter sending GPS coordinates every seventeen seconds to a Svensk Polis computer. He had free reign of the building and even the sidewalk around it if he kept within five feet of it, but no more. Teleborian had already tested it once.

He thought his bracelet had gone off again; the damn thing had done it more than once when he was perfectly well off in his own home. But that would be accompanied by a very loud squealing that could only be remedied by re-entering the bracelet's boundaries. As part of his agreement to house arrest instead of jail, his entire penthouse was void of electronics except for a single built-in landline.

Through the peephole he could see a young woman with a Green Bay Packers beanie pulled down low over long, golden hair. A black Jansen bag slung over one shoulder and she was wearing dark, wraparound sunglasses. He cracked the door open by five inches.

"You have the wr-" He had just turned to run when a riot baton flew in an arc, cracking against his jaw. Four neat droplets of blood flew from the tip onto the white walls as Lieve collapsed the baton and threw it in the water bottle compartment of the bag. She gave Teleborian a kick as he tried to crawl towards the kitchen phone, pressing her boot firmly into his back to keep him from scrambling to the phone.

Teleborian tried to speak through his broken jaw, but all that came out a gurgle. He tried to scream out as a strip of duct tape was clamped firmly over his mouth. Lieve admonished him with the wag of a finger before closing the door to the hall.

* * *

><p><em>If John needs to travel 28 kilometers in 30 minutes, how fast does John have to drive?<em>

Salander clicked E for 56.

_The attendance at a five-day festival triples each day. If the festival opened on Thursday with 345 visitors, how many were in attendance on Sunday?_

A. 9,315

_The addition of descriptive details to the basic information serves to - the book by producing a fuller account._

D. Enrich.*

Out of 120 questions, Salander had done only 34. The test was easy, but it was so fucking tedious that every few questions she found a new way to distract herself. She thought of annoying Blomkvist while he sat mindlessly in front of the TV with questions on grammar, but she figured that even if she managed to get that entire section wrong, she could still get the other 89 questions right. She had the fucking Internet at her fingertips for God's sake.

After another half hour and 6 questions, Salander got bored yet again and decided to log into the Svensk Polis website. No new evidence logged in the case of Blomkvist's apartment, but it wasn't a surprise. She would like to know _what_ had been used, but the arson specialists were still working on that aspect of the investigation. Salander suspected a fertilizer bomb. Those were easy enough to make and would easily put a hole in a small space like Bellmansgatan.

Suddenly Salander had the itch to fuck with the certain someone who was the reason why she was taking a Compulsory Education Evaluation twelve years after she was supposed to. With a few simple keystrokes she was into the Sex Offenders Registry, watching every step Teleborian wasn't taking. _Fucker must be asleep. Time for a wake up call!_

Within fifteen minutes of fiddling with the system, she had the entire registry staff on high alert that Teleborian had ventured out of the set parameters. Since November she had set it off eight times and each time she had the same burly police women that had kindly goose walked her around the courthouse sent to investigate. She would have to find new ways to torture him once he was sentenced, but it would all come in good time.

She reopened the CEE window. Identify the sentence error_: __Illiteracy__ is an enormous __problem__. It __effects__ millions of people worldwide and is __an impediment__ to social progress. __No error__._

She sat there staring at the screen. "What's the difference between effect and affect?"

"Affect is normally a verb and effect is normally a noun."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

He sighed. "What's the context?"

She read him the question.

"It's affect, then." Salander clicked C before moving on to a basic algebra question, Blomkvist getting up to shoulder check.

"Try reading the grammar ones out loud. If a part sounds off, pick it. Works just about every time."

"Thank-" The sound of a Wi-Fi hit off Blomkvist's computer went off at the exact moment the Sex Offender Registry window went down. "What the fuck?"

"Grammar question?"

She shook her head and pointed at the Registry window. "No. It just went on the fritz right when your computer logged on." She back traced to the Svensk Polis page, but it was still in perfect working order and the evidence log had not been compromised.

Salander checked the coordinates. The Wi-Fi address came from the same building as Teleborian, but was registered to a coffee kiosk on the opposite side from the apartment entrance. The Wi-Fi disconnected a minute later, but the person still continued to peruse through the draft of Dag Svensson's article had been piecing together. It completely puzzled her, but with a quick check out the window, she was almost sad that she didn't see smoke rising from the general Östermalm area. It would have been completely justified in Salander's opinion, but perhaps a little too painless.

* * *

><p>Within the Sex Offender Registry, there was a group of individuals whose sole jobs were to monitor those who were limited to the confines of their homes. When a flashing alert noted them to a breach of boundaries by Peter Teleborian, it was like being greeted by an old friend. Teleborian was a repeat offender; today was the ninth time since mid-November that the old bastard had wandered outside of his apartment building.<p>

Aaron Jakobson dialed the landline to Teleborian's residence. He didn't feel like sending anyone out unnecessarily and would rather first verify that it had not been one of the technical glitches that had been popping up with the older bracelets. He waited eleven rings before hanging up. Strangely when he pulled up the locator map, Teleborian was supposedly in his kitchen. It completely perplexed Jakobson, but he chose to send out two officers just to check. It was possible that he had wandered off and then came back on the premises. God knows how stir crazy he would get if he were stuck in his own home after five months.

But he was in no rush. He patiently waited another half hour for Anya and Dana to come off of their lunch break. They had consistently been the ones to make these sorts of visits to Teleborian and were well accustomed to his complaints about his supposed rights infringement and chose to ignore him like a champ. He should be thankful that he hadn't been put in jail to await his sentence; Jakobson was certain the others would kill him before his first court date.

Anya and Dana were less than thrilled about being sent out to Òstermalm to check up on the quack-doctor in his posh little penthouse once more. Every single time they did a check, Teleborian would pathetically claim he'd been sleeping or in the shower. They wondered if he thought they bought his little excuses. Anya knocked on the door, listening for the echo of footsteps. When no sound could be heard, she tried the handle of the door. Unlocked. Even Anya didn't think someone so cocksure as Teleborian would leave his front door unlocked.

Drawing her sidearm, Anya inched the door open. The first thing she saw was four neat droplets of oxidized blood on the otherwise immaculate walls.

Bublanski stood in the off the kitchen, staring at the sight before him. Fifty-eight year old Peter Teleborian dangled naked three inches above the floor with an electrical cord for a noose fixed firmly to his neck. His hands and ankles were bound. A large depression on the side of his skull had split open and blood dripped almost theatrically from the wound. However, that was not the worst of the carnage Bublanski could see. Three horizontal slices had been made with a boning knife, his intestines spilling out. He also seemed to have been castrated.

To Bublanski it looked as if he had been strung up and his flailing had done him in when he kicked the bar stool out from under himself. Holmberg had once again skated through the muck, leaving rusty-bronze trails of blood throughout the kitchen. The coroner was wrapping up, holding up a long thermometer for taking liver temperatures.

"Fresh?"

"Very. I think Anya just missed out on him."

Holmberg slipped on a clean pair of booties before following a smaller drip trail further into the penthouse where marble turned to carpeting. Bublanski followed him to what was a decently sized bathroom off of what looked like an office. Holmberg snapped a few quick photos of the blood droplets on the sink and tub before taking several samples. Leading away from the bathroom were soft footprints heading towards the master bedroom. In the laundry hamper was an olive-green jacket and a pair of black jeans that did not belong to a fifty-eight year old man.

Walking through the apartment, Bublanski was beginning to come to terms with the sequence of events. At some point, Teleborian had answered his front door and had in one way or another been overpowered by someone much smaller than him, possibly with some sort of blunt weapon that had depressed his skull. He fell to the floor, dripping blood from his head and was either dragged or crawled down the hall. At that point he must have been incapacitated long enough to be strung up and placed in a sitting position on a bar stool. Then the fun began for whoever had killed him. Teleborian began to struggle and knocked himself off the stool, lynching himself.

Bublanski returned to the kitchen where the coroner was just having Teleborian cut down from the ceiling. On the counter he again noticed the large boning knife. The handle was stainless steel and he could see the many prints the killer had left. Forensics would have a field day, but the abundance of evidence was almost too good to be true. He shrugged the thought off. He would just have to wait and see how all this would turn out.

Modig had just entered the apartment carrying two cups of coffee, pausing at the sight of the disemboweled psychiatrist being placed in a vinyl bag for transport. It was enough for her to calmly place the cups on the counter. Next to it she noticed something peculiar. She called Holmberg out of the bathroom and Bublanski looked over her shoulder.

"What do you make of this?"

Encased in a glob of gore was a single blonde hair.

Holmberg fumbled for a small evidence capsule in his breast pocket. "I see an excellent DNA source."

"Bag the contents of the laundry hamper as well. It looks like the killer had a spare set of clothes and left the bloodied ones here before walking out." He turned to Modig, "What's the time window we're working with?"

"At eleven forty-seven, Teleborian's ankle bracelet went off. When Aaron Jakobson checked the whereabouts of the bracelet Teleborian was in the kitchen but wouldn't answer the phone when Jakobson called in. Officers Anya Byquist and Dana Klassen arrived on scene and found him at twelve twenty-three."

"Call Jakobson and ask him to analyze every step Teleborian took in the last four hours. With any luck we'll get a damn accurate time of death." He turned to Holmber. "Anything out of place, Jerker?"

"Except for the electrical cord used to string him and the kitchen knife everything looks undisturbed. Seeing the way he was found I don't think-"

Modig jumped in. "How was he found?"

Holmberg turned his camera back on, flicking through pictures until he found the right ones. Modig couldn't hide the disgust on her face.

"As I was saying, because of the…_condition_ the body was in, I highly doubt robbery was a motive or even afterthought in this case. I wouldn't be surprised if the ankle bracelet scared the killer off mid shower."

"It makes noise?"

"Very loudly, I might add. It's one of the older ones so it makes sure you know someone is wearing it."

"The building entrance has security cameras. I want the tapes pulled. So far we've established we're looking for a blonde woman, hair hanging at or just below the shoulders wearing an olive green jacket and black jeans." Bublanski turned to Holmberg. "Jerker, if I dismiss you now, how fast can you get me DNA and fingerprints?"

"DNA, two days if I stick it at the front of the line and someone doesn't do the same. Fingerprints I can have processed in a few hours."

"Get to it then."

When Holmberg was out the door with the more vital pieces of evidence, Modig turned to Bublanski. "Second murder in a week. Stockholm is practically falling apart at the seams."

"I know. Forensics still hasn't verified what the explosive components were in the Bellmansgatan bombing. I'm particularly concerned that Blomkvist's laptop wasn't found."

"There is the possibility that he has it with him."

"There is but that's assuming he took his laptop with him wherever he went, which on New Years Eve I highly doubt."

"Bellmansgatan doesn't have a camera in it, does it?"

Bublanski thought long and hard for a minute. "Not the main entrance. I believe the overhead walkway that leads up to the apartment does."

"Call Jerker?"

"Please." Bublanski grabbed his cup of coffee from off the counter before taking the elevator to the first floor. He waved to the security camera before ringing up the landlord.

* * *

><p>Jerker Holmberg was the epitome of multitasking. Two hours after leaving the scene, he was parked in front of his computer, clicking through frame-by-frame stills of the Östermalm security camera. On his second screen he was chatting with Jakobson over Teleborian's movement in the hours before he was murdered. The hair found at the scene had just begun its two-day journey through processing.<p>

At ten thirty-three a couple had entered the Linnégatan building. Twenty minutes later a man in a business suit took the back stairs. It wasn't until ten fifty-one that Holmberg saw anything interesting. A woman wearing a beanie with long blond hair walked in, carrying a black Jansport backpack. The tape was black and white, but Holmberg would bet his retirement that her jacket was olive green. She turned around briefly before summoning an elevator and heading up. Her eyes were hidden behind wraparound Oakley's.

Fast-forward forty-seven minutes later, a woman with blonde hair tied in a back ponytail and wearing a dark blue UCLA hoodie could be seen coming out of the elevator carrying a black backpack. This time she was not wearing sunglasses and Holmberg guessed she had blue eyes. She could essential match the description of half the twenty-something women in Sweden. He sent the stills of the woman's face to Bublanski.

Combined with Jakobson's report on Teleborian's positioning and the security tapes, Holmberg narrowed down the estimated TOD to sometime between eleven eleven and eleven twenty-eight. It would have given the killer enough time to make herself presentable before either walking out or being spooked out by Teleborian's bracelet.

Satisfied his security tape work was done, he went to go check up on the fingerprints. A hit had been registered, but the person had come back listed as 'Out of Country.' But Holmberg wasn't the type to give up so easily. He extended the search parameters into the Europol database. It would take longer than Bublanski would like, but in circumstances of the unknown such as this, it was better than empty hands. When a hit came back less than forty-five minutes later though, he was amazed. He wrung up Bublanski.

"Prints got a hit off of an expat."

"Go on."

"In 2003 a misdemeanor charge was filed in Belgium to then twenty-three year old Lieve Petersen. Besides the freaky dark brown eyes, I don't really see much of a resemblance to the security footage." Holmberg squinted at the small license printout. "Height and weight seem pretty accurate, though."

"Great. Listen, I'm driving to Bellmansgatan to check a security tape. Forward myself and Sonja the license photo, then get ahold of the transport authority."

"Aye-aye, Bubble."

* * *

><p>Just as the sun began to set, Lieve Petersen stepped into the Rygerfjord Hostel docked along Söder Mälarstrand. For the flash of a Swedish ID registered in the name of Eli Laastad and 450 krona, she was a modest single room on the hostel boat. With a small bottle of dish soap, she slowly stripped away the blonde hair dye she had put in three days prior. It wasn't safe anymore. With a bit of pure acetone the hair extensions were also gone leaving behind auburn, shoulder length hair.<p>

The boat had no Wi-Fi, but she was content to just open up Blomkvist's laptop to skim through the notes for Dag Svensson's book. Teleborian hadn't been included in it, which was a shame. She pulled out the napkin she'd written on at the McDonald's, crossing out the top name. When she was done, she slipped the laptop into the drawer under the bed and made her way to the hostel lounge. She stopped in the doorway outside the hall, the evening news reporting the suspicious death of Dr. Teleborian.

She resisted the urge to laugh. She thought she had made it quite clear what had happened to him. Suddenly her license was on the screen and the urge to laugh was gone. The picture was seven years old, but was still pretty damn accurate. Petersen slowly backed down the hall away from the lounge to her room, rethinking her strategy while in Stockholm.

An hour later, Petersen once again slipped out her room. She'd seen a motorcycle out front with the helmet placed on the handlebars with a balaclava tucked inside. She bet it would still be there. Pulling it out of the helmet, she stuffed it in the pocket of a windbreaker she'd grabbed out of airport lost baggage store at Bromma. In the dark no one would notice her as she walked to the Slussen T-bana.

For once, Salander wasn't waiting for her and she could board in peace.

* * *

><p>By five Salander had had enough of Blomkvist's overly helpful nature and slipped out of the apartment with her laptop bag slung over her shoulder. She had discovered the hard way that Blomkvist was a bored eater and had near-snglehandedly emptied the entire fridge. Subsequently, she contemplated the effectiveness of putting a lock on the fridge when she stepped out into the minus two degree weather.<p>

At the junction of Götgatan and Svartensgatan, she turned south towards Greenpeace and Millennium. The code had not been changed and the TV was turned to the evening news.

Christer Malm looked up from his computer as she walked by. "Oh it's you."

Salander paid him no attention as she climbed the stairs to Blomkvist and Berger's shared loft office. His work laptop roared to life when she booted it up along side of her laptop. It took four tries to figure out his password, _Pernilla1986_. With the five o clock news playing in the background, she took meticulous inventory of what was and wasn't on his work computer. It looked as if he'd done a good job at keeping them both updated, but the work computer had a few more additions to the Dag Svennson book. Most notably, Blomkvist had made quite the list of names and addresses of the offenders that Dag was planning to expose.

She opened up some of the more recent files. On 1/1/2007, Blomkvist created a file labeled C.S. _What are you up to Kalle Blomkvist?_

There were six documents in total. Three were titles to the Zalachenko properties had inherited. There was an ER report dated for 1997 as well as a student visa denial to the Netherlands. Finally there was a file of twenty-three heavily blacked out pages with the heading Camilla N. Sjölander.

It seemed Kalle Fucking Blomkvist just couldn't let sleeping dogs lie. She wasn't going to let him get away with this. Clicking all of the documents, she sent them to the printer downstairs. When she got home she would be sure to shove each and every paper down his throat.

A chair scraped on the wood floor downstairs, the sound soon followed by footfalls up the loft steps.

"Salander, isn't it?"

She didn't respond, just continuing to click through C.S. _Go away_.

"There's something on the news concerning Dr. Teleborian that I thought you might be interested in." She looked up at him sharply and he seemed to take a slight step back. When she didn't immediately get up, Malm shrugged and turned around. The back door clicked behind him, leaving Salander alone. She plugged her computer in to start copying his hard drive over before sliding down the bannister to the main room.

Malm had left the TV on, but the news had skipped over to report by a very busty woman about the freakish weather much of Sweden had been experiencing. Salander paid no mind to this either, contenting herself to raid the Millennium fridge, deciding on a green apple. The ticker tape passed by with little information of interest and after a while, Salander almost thought that Malm had been pulling her leg. It wasn't until twenty minutes of sitting in at Malm's empty desk that a report from the Ministry of Justice popped up.

'_At approximately twelve thirty this afternoon, a routine check led to the discovery of Dr. Peter Teleborian dead in his apartment. His death has been ruled that of a homicide, but the official cause of death is currently pending.'_ The prosecutor held up a black and white surveillance camera image_. 'This woman has been placed at the scene of the crime and has been identified as 27-year-old Lieve Petersen. The suspect is described as 150 centimeters tall, weighing approximately 50 kilos with dark brown eyes and naturally auburn hair that was last seen dyed blonde. As always it is being advised to contact police if sighted as the suspect has been declared as armed and extremely dangerous.'_

The apple core rolled off the tip of her fingers as she watched the report. The conclusion of the press conference was followed by a suspect recap, showing a recent surveillance photo along side of what looked to be either a driver's license or a passport photo.

_Teleborian is dead._

A smile spread across her face and she was sure she looked every bit the raving lunatic his 'evaluations' suggested. But that hadn't mattered in months. The tides had been reversed so spectacularly in the last few months. She had gone from incompetent to citizen just as fast as he had gone from revered psychiatrist to reviled pedophile.

_Teleborian is dead._

The thought that her longstanding tormentor was more liberating that she could have imagined, but Salander wanted proof. The printer was still chugging along, so she took the opportunity to race up to the loft and skim through the evidence database. Unlike the Bellmansgatan bombing, this case had a treasure-trove of documentation and evidence. And pictures.

The carnage was a macabre cross between Gottfried Vanger's methods of mutilation and Salander's own brand of revenge. His face had been bashed to the point of or near unconsciousness and his abdomen was reduced to a bloody, filleted mess of intestines and gore. The report also claimed that he'd been castrated, but Salander couldn't visually verify with the angle the photos had been taken at. She just wished she hadn't activated his ankle bracelet and let the bastard rot for a few days.

The printer had stopped groaning and Salander went to retrieve the file printout that was immediately shoved into her laptop bag. She looked at Blomkvist's and shoved it in along with hers. It wasn't something planned, but if it kept him out of the fridge and away from her computer, she'd drag his whole fucking office back to Fiskargatan with her.

* * *

><p>Sometime after seven, Blomkvist could hear the sounds of a struggle as the door to Fiskargatan opened.<p>

"No, no, NO!" Something dark suddenly zipped by Blomkvist's leg. "Fuck." Salander slammed the door behind her with a booted foot, chasing after the damn cat as fast as she could carry a 20-pound laptop bag and several boxes.

Blomkvist walked up and grabbed the top box, a 12 pack of beer. He eyed it. "Sapporo?"

Salander dropped the boxes on the kitchen island, opening one of the smaller boxes and offering it to him. "Cat bait." In it was an assortment of about twenty different varieties of sushi from Mizamoto's down the street. Blomkvist was completely dumbfounded; he'd rarely seen Salander eat anything that didn't involve microwaving. She turned her back to him, rattling through the kitchen drawers for a churchkey before carrying a box and two more beers off to the living room.

The cat was curled up in the warm spot Blomkvist had left when Salander sat down on the extreme left of it. She didn't know whose cat it was, but it had somehow managed to follow her up most of Svartensgatan and slip through the front door to Fiskargatan. The cat reminded her of the one in Hedestad, up until Martin Fucking Vanger butchered it and stuck its head on her saddle.

The cat eyed Blomkvist's box as he plopped down in the center of the couch. Salander took note but said nothing, turning the TV on. The news was just finishing, but the press conference was being recapped. Blomkvist frowned at the screen.

"Is all this in celebration of that?" He motioned to the TV.

"Partially." Blomkvist expected no less from her.

"And the other part?"

Salander shrugged, setting her empty bottle on the coffee table with a clunk that sent the cat skittering off towards the master bedroom. It wasn't until another beer later that the cat began t inch closer and closer to the box, seeing as its primary owner had significantly lowered her defenses. Blomkvist watched the staring competition that ensued, thoroughly amused.

The cat lowered its head experimentally to the box. There were three pieces left and Salander didn't feel like finishing them off.

She shoved the box towards the cat, popping open another bottle of beer. "Fine, you win."

After a while of just staring at the TV blankly, Salander stood and walked into the kitchen, opening up her laptop. No new hits. Salander wasn't accustomed to the degree of helplessness that this case presented. Whoever had demoed the apartment was obviously not an amateur at this type of shit. She wracked her slightly muddled brain. Maybe she was dealing with an organization? A ragtag group of the Section that hadn't been shut down?

She didn't feel that was likely. No doubt that some stragglers from the Section had survived, but Salander doubted they'd have any interest in Dag Svennson's book on sex trafficking. It seemed that Dag Svennson's book was the key. Nothing else held the bastard's attention longer than the book.

She scratched absently at one of her newer tattoos, unbuttoning the collar of her shirt slightly to relieve some of the irritation it was causing as she read through some of the more frequently viewed files on Blomkvist's laptop. She placed several monitors on those specific files, mostly involving civil servants and police members paying for the services of under aged girls. _Sick fuck._

Salander left the half empty bottle on the counter before dragging her laptop and its bag into the living room. The cat was nowhere to be found when she dropped down on the couch next to Blomkvist.

Blomkvist watched intently as she hammered away on the computer and opened a map of greater Stockholm. Like the other few maps on the dining room table, it quickly became a pincushion with each and every hit being meticulously plotted. The sleeve of her shirt sagged slightly, the collar opening just enough for him to see yet another new tattoo with a very aggravated appearance.

"Where do you normally get your tattoos done?" His hand wandered to the opened collar of her Henley, fingers gently skimming the slightly raised edges of the tiny 0's and 1's that dotted her shoulder.

"Church of Steel."

"Are they sanitary?"

Lisbeth's head snapped up, hatred suddenly burning in her eyes, but Blomkvist did not retract his hand, a peculiar look spreading across his face.

'_Do you know that your obsessive body modifications can lead HIV and Hepatitis?'_

_"Yes.'_

_'Then you won't have any problems if I forbid you as your guardian from getting anymore piercings or tattoos, now will you?_

She looked at Blomkvist, her rage dying down instantly. Blomkvist wasn't Bjurman. There were no ulterior motives to his words and his eyes were filled with quiet concern. Lisbeth hated it.

A hand waved in her face. "Lisbeth?"

"It's just a mild reaction. It'll be gone in another week." Her gaze was planted firmly on the floor.

Blomkvist didn't look convinced, but changed the subject. It was always futile to argue. "What is the tattoo of?"

_Something you would never understand._ She shrugged before pulling the shirt over her head, revealing a faded black tank and an intricate binary coded wasp that extended all the way down to her elbow. It had taken months for her artist to create an adequate form for the tattoo, but when it was finished it was truly one of a kind.

"I get the wasp, but what does the binary stand for?" His fingers skimmed the outer edges of the wasp's jaws.

She gave him a lopsided smile, but said nothing as she got up and walked to the master, pushing the cat off her pillow. She'd kick it out in the morning.

**This is the binary code: ****01001100 01100001 01110111 01110011 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01100011 01101111 01100010 01110111 01100101 01100010 01110011 00101100 00100000 01110111 01101000 01101001 01100011 01101000 00100000 01101101 01100001 01111001 00100000 01100011 01100001 01110100 01100011 01101000 00100000 01110011 01101101 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100110 01101100 01101001 01100101 01110011 00101100 00100000 01100010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101100 01100101 01110100 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110011 01110000 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101000 01101111 01110010 01101110 01100101 01110100 01110011 00100000 01100010 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01110010 01101111 01110101 01100111 01101000 00101110. **

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	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5 Women Who Hate Men

January 8th - 9th

'_The sky was dark when Lisbeth Salander stepped out of Globala Gymnasiet on the south side of Hornsgatan. She was the runt of the grade sevens, but it didn't stop her from smashing that stupid Bergström boy into the brick wall next to the library. Salander knew she was easily outmatched and it took three burly grade elevens to haul them both up to their separate corners of the infirmary after she'd been thrown face down into a rubbish bin._

_An hour and half later she was released from detention and into the world for the two week Christmas break. Everyone was excited for it; but she knew it meant that _he_ would be back. She hoped in vain that his long absence since Midsummers's Eve could be taken as a sign of his horrific death at the hands of a lorry on some desolate rural road where he'd be left for the ravens._

_Lisbeth heard the squeal of bicycle tires and laughter around the corner on Lundsgatan as Camilla and her gaggle of school friends tore around the corner. The cheap chrome frame still shined brightly as they rode past,_

_Camilla paused briefly as she passed, though Lisbeth didn't know why she would even acknowledge her when she was so close to her friends._

"_Papa's home." Then she was gone, riding the wrong direction down Ringvägen, shrieking like banshees._

_Their apartment was in the eighth building on the left. His car was parked across the street in front of the apartments with the nice view of the Riddarfjärden, the cabin filled with McDonald's wrappers and beer cans that looked to be days or possibly weeks old. A small trail of cigarette smoke could be seen from their second floor window and Lisbeth had no doubt that he was watching her._

_Their neighbors on the floor all seemed to be loitering in the hall when she raced up from the stairs._

"_It's just the fucking Salander's," was one man's comment to his immediate neighbor, giving her a nasty glare that she returned in kind as she ran by. He was just as bad a wife beater as her own father and at times she could hear muted screams through the wall their apartment units shared._

_The apartment was dead silent when she entered. That alone was a bad sign. She could see Zalachenko smiling sweetly at her and she could never remember a time of absolute quiet when he was here._

_Her hands were balled into tiny fists at the sight of him, standing defiantly by the coat closet. He never smiled. "Where's my mother?"_

"_Right here." He held his hands out, and then Lisbeth could see what was hidden behind their ugly checked couch._

No._ Lisbeth looked down on her abnormally still mother. There was always some movement, some tiny little sob. Now she was as limp and unmoving as a rag doll. _He's killed her_, she thinks, rushing to her mother's side. No, she's still breathing. Her eyes are open but unseeing._

"_What did you do to her!"_

_Zalachenko looked down at his runt of a daughter grabbing her forcefully by the chin. "A woman should never refuse a man, Lisbeth. I only put your mother in her place."_

_He laughed at her then, the sound filling her with rage as she watched him prod her mother with the tip of his steel-toed boot before flicking his cigarette on the rug to smolder. He turned for the door, Lisbeth hot on his heels, landing a sharp kick behind his knee. He stumbled slightly and when she returned for more he backhanded her with enough force to send her flying into the couch._

_He hoisted her up by her auburn hair. "DO NOT DISRESPECT ME IN THIS HOUSE!" Another smack to the face and he was gone, stomping down the hallway as Lisbeth crawled to her prone mother. She still hadn't so much as moved or made a sound. Blood had congealed in her wavy brown hair, her face a mass of black and blue that gave her an inhuman appearance._

"_Your mother was a whore."'_

Salander woke with a start, a cold sweat poring down her face as she felt a hand grope at her neck in the dark. _Fuck, he's here!_ Panic coursed through her veins as she rolled off the edge of the bed, hitting the floor hard before rolling off towards the wardrobe. Her Taser was in the top drawer stuffed inside a sock. She waved it menacingly at the shadow moving on the bed.

"…Lisbeth?" Blomkvist saw the blue electrical current that sparked in her hand. "Fucking hell!"

His voice was enough to bring her out of her trance, the Taser slipping limply from her fingers. _Blomkvist?_ She slid down against the wall, a tremor running its course through her body. _Fuck! I was actually going to tase him!_

The arm that had been draped across her neck reached out to the bedside lamp, the light burning every fiber of her mind as she clutched her head. The bed groaned, bare feet padding over to her. _I was going to tase him_. A hand dropped down to her tattooed shoulder. Salander just wanted him to leave, or at least turn the light off.

"Bad dream?"

She stood; shoving his hand roughly from her and giving him the blankest expression she could muster up before walking to the master bathroom, locking the door behind her. The lighting was more subdued in here. The large Jacuzzi tub looked extremely.

She waited for the tiles to steam before clambering in, Jacuzzi jets on full blast. The bed creaked again and she slipped further down into the water, staring at the tile opposite to the tub.

She didn't want to think; just mindlessly sit there. No feelings, no thoughts. Once she'd been good at distancing herself from the terror that sleep often brought, but now every night was a gamble. This time it nearly ended with her tasing Mikael. Only when the water had become lukewarm did she decide to crawl out of the tub. Wrapping herself in a towel, she looked at her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror, realizing she couldn't hide forever. Her hand wandered to the three day old bruising forming a robber's mask across much of her face.

_Her eyes were unseeing, the corners bloodied where the pressure of Zalachenko's kicks had been vicious enough to rupture the fragile capillaries of her eyes…_

With a resounding crash, the door to the medicine cabinet flew off its hinges, shattering the built in mirror on the slick tile floor.

Blomkvist had just dragged a skillet out of one of the kitchen cabinets when Salander finally came out of the master suite in a black tank labeled 'Zinken FC.' The cat was perched on top of the coffee machine, soaking up the radiating warmth from the freshly made pot. Its paws batted at her hand when she reached for a mug on the rack hanging over it. Salander didn't know what to do with the damn thing. Short of throwing a can of tuna down the stairs, she doubted she'd be able to remove it and still come out in one piece. _Cat 1, Salander 0, _she thought_._

"You were thrashing around a bit last night. The cat was absolutely terrified." He joked lamely, cracking an egg into the skillet.

Salander was not amused.

"I'm heading back to Millennium. We need to work out the publishing schedule of Dag's book."

She glared at his backside. The scene felt entirely too domestic to her. Here she was, with a cat sitting on her counter and Blomkvist making an omelet while she just leaned on the counter trying to figure out how the hell things got this far.

The cat followed her out of the kitchen, hoping up onto the window seat where it could watch her click through her laptop. The last Wi-Fi hit had been at 12:18pm the previous day. _Battery dead? _She sipped her coffee, skimming through all the file monitors. None of them had been tripped either. Salander saw no reason for the sudden lack of activity. Her presence on his computer was completely undetectable. It was completely baffling.

Blomkvist's head poked through the archway leading into the kitchen. "Do you want anything?" She shook her head, shutting the laptop again. Then she remembered the laptop she'd pilfered from Millennium. She drained her mug, leaving it on the coffee table. In the bedroom she haphazardly shoved a pair of boxing gloves and a change of close into a gym bag.

She carried the laptop into the living room, putting it on the end table next to one of her pop can ashtrays. She looked over and found the cat with its head stuck all the way down into her coffee mug.

"God you're fucking weird." The cat yanked its head out of the mug at the sound of her voice, tilting its head to one side as if saying, '_Yes, I know_.'

* * *

><p>"Get off the ropes, he's going to-"<p>

_Thock! _Paolo cursed, watching one of his trainee's slip dazed through the ropes of the boxing ring onto the concrete floor. He grabbed the boy by the arm, dragging him over to one of the stools lined up against the wall. He'd have a good mark on his jaw, but it didn't look like a hit worthy of a concussion.

"I told you to stay in the center of the ring. Go ice up for a bit and then do some footwork drills before you clear out."

The boy, Assef, looked up at him with a murderous glance said nothing, kicking a pail clear across the room as he walked off to the locker rooms.

"Yeah, well listen to your coaches when they tell you something." Paolo muttered under his breath, watching as the victor of that bought went on to pummeling the bags. In retrospect, he supposed that it wasn't the most ideal match-up, but his goal had been to teach Assef to just _move_. The boy could throw a decent punch, but against a pressure boxer like Myca he'd have to adapt accordingly. At least that was Paolo's plan for the aspiring fighter.

The studio was still fairly empty at this time in the morning, with the exception of Myca, Assef, and a few other bag beaters, Paolo was on his own to keep the peace. There was a steady rhythm going over on the mats, but a dull _thathumpthathump_ caught his attention. He recognized the sound of a newbie, typically with one arm stronger than the other. But the speed threw him off. It was quick, experienced. An odd combination.

_Lisbeth_. Yes, he could see her now, back turned to him and slugging a torso bag placed at its maximum height of two meters high. There was only one person he'd ever seen at that height, and Paolo knew she'd have no chance against him. He could see her left hook was significantly weaker than her right.

"That's a good beat for getting your ass kicked all over the ring."

Salander gave the dummy one more loaded punch before turning around to face him. He winced at the bandit mask of bruising that covered most of her face.

"Anyone to spar around here?"

Paolo pointed to Myca. "If you like Thai kickboxers, Myca's your boy. Then there's a brute in the shower that can't move for shit. You'd get a good kick out of him if he keeps being so fucking stubborn about his footwork."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"I'll take the Iraqi." _And she knows he's Iraqi, how? _"Where is he?"

He looked down at her. There was a fire in her coal colored eyes that showed her serious need to beat the shit out of something. A good few rounds with Assef would be perfect, Paolo decided. She was his hornet and would keep going back for more until she was had her opponent on their knees or needed to be hauled out of the ring. Plus she couldn't truly cause him any lasting damage with her offbeat hooks. He nodded before walking off to the locker room.

Assef was sitting on the bench, holding a cold compress to his jaw. Paolo threw his gloves at him.

"Get up. You have another match."

"I'm not-"

"Don't be a fucking sore loser. Just get up and do as you're told." He added a death glare for reinforcement before heading back out to the main gym. Salander was already up and hopping around the ring, making quick air jabs at an invisible opponent.

She was rusty, but not bad. He called her over to a corner.

"Okay, lock in. Remember Samir? Well Assef is a slightly smaller version. He can swing like all hell, but the only direction he moves is backwards and he likes to uppercut when you get him in the corners. You got all that?"

Salander nodded just as Assef walked out of the locker room. With one glance at Salander, he crossed his arms and no amount of cursing or swearing was going to put him in the ring with her.

Paolo switched tactics immediately. He called out to one of the veteran boxers, Jonah. "I have two-hundred krona on Fröken Salander that says she'll get in five hits before he can block one."

"I have four hundred that says she'll put him on his ass just like Samir." Jonah played along. He looked up at Salander, "Good to see you back, Salander."

Jonah made an easy four hundred krona the moment the bell went off. Paolo suggested going out for coffee afterwards.

* * *

><p>Helen Forsberg opened the door to Holmberg's office. The office was dark and Holmberg was soundly asleep, slumped over his keyboard with a little circle bouncing around on his desktop.<p>

"Jerker, WAKE UP." She smacked the desk and was afraid he would fly out of his chair when he suddenly jumped up.

"What?" His hand groped in the semidarkness for his glasses. All the while, he squinted at the evidence baggie with a single vial in it. "A present for me?"

"Just hold out your hand." When he made a reach for it, Forsberg slapped him firmly on the wrist.

"What was that for?" He wiggled the mouse, bringing up his desktop screen with security video from the Bellmansgatan catwalk.

"You gave me a hair extension, not a hair. I had to fight Bublanski over the phone so I could pull some real hairs off of the shirt they found in the laundry hamper. She's a natural redhead, by the way."

"When do you think it'll be done?" Holmberg casually clicked through stills. He'd seen a blonde woman going _up_ the catwalk to Bellmansgatan, but had yet to get a face shot of her coming back down.

"Theoretically I could process it in about four hours. But it'll cost you."

"What do you want?"

"Seats at Råsunda, and I don't mean the shitty seats up in the corners either."

"Do you know how expensive just the shit seats are now?"

"That's why I'm asking."

"This is blackmail."

"No, this is progress on a high priority case." She pointed at the screen. "And don't waste your time looking for the chick. They found her fingerprints all over a brass doorhandle to the apartment an hour ago."

Holmberg sighed, rubbing his face. "How many games do you want to go to?"

"All of them."

"Be serious."

"Whenever Durgårdens plays AIF." She turned and walked out of the door, taking the evidence bag with her.

He poked his head out the door, yelling at her retreating form, "I want those results in four hours flat!" When the coast was clear he shut the door and went back to sleep on his keyboard.

* * *

><p>Blomkvist's back was turned away from the loft steps, but he could hear as Berger ascended the stairs, wrapping her hands around his eyes. "We have a coffee thief in our midst."<p>

He poked her hand with his editing pen, "I'll reimburse you later, I'm editing Lotta's article."

"So you admit it?"

"Sorry, but I have to protect my source."

She pursed her lips, perching on the sofa at a right angle to Blomkvist's desk. "Tell your source to at least clean up after stealing apples from the fridge, too." Blomkvist gave a snort, but did not look up from his work.

Berger sighed and grabbed the stack of papers that Blomkvist had already painstakingly combed through as well as a green sharpie. She had no doubts in his editing abilities and would probably make not a single mark on the papers, but Karim was still at the intern level and therefore required a bit more guidance from the top brass at Millennium. Other than asking for a few clarifications on the article's mathematics in the margins, Berger was impressed at how Karim had grown in her writing. Maybe she would bring up the idea of getting Karim onboard full time at the April board meeting.

He passed her the remaining stack before logging onto his computer. He'd been working sporadically since November in patching up Dag's book and now he believed it was just about ready. In the end he had to deduct about thirty pages due to the circumstances surrounding the Salander trial and the Enskede murders, but what was left would still undoubtedly still cause quite the shake up.

The problem was the password to the files had been changed. There was only one person that could have done it, but for what reason he had no clue. He grabbed his desk landline, jabbing the buttons to connect him to Salander's mobile.

Seven rings later, she picked up.

"Lisbeth, unlock my files." It sounded like she was at a bar or something. The sun wasn't even up yet.

"No."

"I'm not going to argue with you over this. I need those files unlocked."

"Just trust me." With that she hung up on him. When he called back he was immediately directed to her voicemail.

Erika didn't look up from the last few pages of Karim's article. "Privacy problems?"

"Trust problems, apparently." It was too early to deal with this. He started typing in all the obvious passwords, knowing the futility of it. With his luck the password would be a physics equation married with binary coding. "You know, fuck it. I'll just print off my own article and edit that."

"Oh, that reminds me, _She_ from TV4 sent me a letter expressing their dearest condolences regarding your death. You might want to let them and the rest of the world in on your miraculous survival."

Damn. He'd forgotten all about that. He opened up a new word file and quickly typed up a single paragraph, adding a pixelated webcam shot for good measure before sending the press release off to the major news carriers. He sent a hard copy to the printer downstairs as well. He was now officially alive and well.

He jogged down the steps the printer, noting the ink needed to be restocked. Other than Berger and Malm, the rest of Millennium was woefully unaware of his existence. It wasn't the greatest feeling in the world to break the news to the rest in such a cold fashion, but he pinned the press release on the bulletin board over the kitchenette sink anyways. He stopped when he noticed another paper in the printer tray. The heading was 'Police Report 2919973004' and featured a ten-year-old mug shot of a heavily pierced seventeen-year-old Lisbeth.

* * *

><p>Paolo Roberto, ever the gentleman, held the door open for Salander as they walked into Mellqvist's Kaffebar. Salander herself hadn't been there in nearly three years, but it was the closest place she could think of with decent coffee and a public Wi-Fi port. Neither were the sort of trendy people Mellqvist usually attracted, but they were more than happy to take a seat in one of the back corners, facing out towards Hornsgatan.<p>

Salander paid at the counter, watching Paolo dump four sugar packets into his coffee. She never figured him as a sweet tooth. _Surprise, surprise._ She turned her phone on, connecting to her laptop. Still nothing. Instead of feeling at ease, it only served to put her more on edge. Paolo looked up to see her tense expression.

"He thump you in the face?" She shook her head no, grabbing a couple sugar packets of her own. "I told him I'd rip his balls off if he did."

"You didn't have to." _I could handle him on my own_.

"I beg to differ. One, your entire nose looks like someone took a baseball bat to it. Two, it doesn't matter how quick you are, one hit to the face and Assef would have guaranteed you a pretty good concussion."

He sipped at his coffee for a while, considering the woman sitting in front of him. "But you've changed. A lot. If it weren't for the tattoos I wouldn't have recognized you at all today. You're not that little seventeen year old that thumped me in the balls on your first day."

"I can still do that if you want."

He smiled reflexively at the sight of her own crooked one. He had so many questions and he didn't know where to start. One day she just quit going to the club and next thing he knows she's the highlight of every breaking news bulletin in northern Europe.

"Thanks for saving Mimmi last year." She addressed her coffee cup, not looking up at him. "I should have thanked you sooner."

She was apologizing to him? "It was worth it. Didn't some bikers kill that big blonde fucker last autumn?"

"I guess." The corner of her lips twitched slightly upwards. Her eyes dared him to think otherwise.

"You were in the hospital for a while last spring. Anything to do with your weak left hook?"

"I got shot."

He let out a whistle. So that was why she had the bullet hole tattoo on her shoulder. Kind of creepy, but OK, he could respect that. "I can help you work out the kinks if you want. I'm in for early morning sparring Friday through Monday."

Salander opened her mouth to reply, but her mobile suddenly went off.

"Lisbeth, unlock my files." _Damn it_! She didn't think he'd want access to them so soon, but she had put the password on just as a precaution. She didn't want the info to be printed as long as someone else was skimming through the files. She wanted to be prepared for the possible eventuality that that information might be used for some other purpose by whoever had stolen the laptop.

"No."

"I'm not going to argue with you over this. I need those files unlocked."

"Just trust me." She hung up before he could protest further, switching her phone to voicemail to avoid the constant pestering that would surely follow. Paolo was giving her an expectant look that made her downright uncomfortable.

"What?"

"Are you going to abandon to club again or do you want to work out with us again? Samir misses you." He didn't bat and eye at her biting tone.

She drained her mug. "I'll see if I can. No promises."

Paolo seemed to think it was an adequate response.

They stood and walked out of Mellqvist together. Finken FC was only another block down the street. She climbed in her car, turning on defrost and lighting a cigarette, waiting for the car to thaw out.

Salander then remembered her furry new resident. "Paolo, you want a cat?"

"Nope. Deathly allergic. You should have that Miriam Wu drop in sometime. Myca could use another Thai kickboxer to spar with."

"She moved." Lisbeth dropped her cigarette butt into a puddle, looking up at Paolo as he towered over her.

"I don't blame her." There was no accusation in his voice as he waved when she pulled away from the curb. Salander had decided a long time ago she liked Paolo. He was a cocky bastard, but he also had a strong no-bullshit side that was refreshing. She regretted that she hadn't sat down with him beforehand, but was set on making amends in the near future.

She still didn't feel like going back home as she drove along Hornsgatan. While she had successfully beaten most of the rage out of her system against the stupid Iraqi boy, she still didn't want to think of the morning's events. She still had to clean up the bathroom and buy a new mirror._Wait a minute_. Mimmi had a few mirrors lying around that didn't serve any use. Salander doubted she'd miss one of the smaller ones.

She pulled a completely illegal U-turn at Hornsgatan and Blecktornsgränd to double back towards Lundagatan. Paolo was still standing outside of Finken FC, talking to someone in a car.

At Lundagatan 49 she parked on a yellow curb, but it was too early for anyone to be out writing parking tickets. She wouldn't take that long anyways. A radio store had recently moved into the old hardware store space on the ground floor.

Her feet thundered up the steps to the second floor. Her former childhood home was the only one on the second floor with an outdoor space and was in the dead center of the building. The halls still had the same smell of stale cigarettes as they did fifteen years ago, but the largely immigrant population that inhabited the building was now gone and it was strangely quiet.

She dragged her key ring out of her pockets, but found the door unlocked. _Shit_. Instinctively she wrapped her keys around her fist to create a set of impromptu brass knuckles. The apartment was only 500 square feet and she'd be fighting in extremely tight quarters if anyone was still home.

The entrance was a crowded mass of shoes and Salander could hear the rattle of kitchen drawers being opened in the general living area._Fucking looters._ She raised her fist, ready to strike in the five steps it would take to get to the fridge. Then her mobile went off in her pocket.

She wasn't sure what happened next.

Something heavy clattered to the floor as Salander watched a petite woman in a charcoal grey hooded jacket sprint for the sliding door onto the balcony. Salander gave chase, but the woman was up and over the railing. It was a fifteen-foot drop, but it didn't stop the woman from hitting the ground running. The woman had already scrambled up the steps to upper Lundagatan when Salander landed a little less gracefully outside of SMT Radio. By the time she reached the top of the steps, she could just see someone in a charcoal shirt slide down a wooded embankment towards Söder Mälarstrand. Salander clutched at the stitch in her side, knowing she had lost the foot race.

Salander paced at the top of upper Lundagatan, trying to get her breath back. A woman had just walked into her old apartment and completely ransacked it. She could have easily had the situation under control if her fucking mobile hadn't rung. She pulled it roughly from her jeans pocket.

**Get in touch with Bublanski. Annika says don't argue. –M**

KALLE FUCKING BLOMKVIST! She lashed out at a birch sapling, snapping its trunk with a single kick. First he runs background checks on her sister, now he rings her mobile to try and get her to talk to some fucking cop!

It had started to rain and Salander went back into the building to take stock of the shit heap mess the bitch had left. The lock to the door was unmarked, giving Salander a nasty feeling that whoever head broken in had a key. The mailbag had been emptied onto the floor along with every single drawer and cabinet. A five-inch folding knife lay on the kitchen counter that Salander did not recognize. She herself preferred bludgeoning weapons or blinding weapons; too many things could go wrong if you added guns and knives to a fight.

After a thorough inspection and a full pack of cigarettes, she was convinced nothing had been taken, but someone had been searching pretty damn hard for something.

On her way home, she stopped off at the 7-Eleven on Götgatan, buying a carton of Marlboros and a few tins of cat food. Salander looked at the labels, wondering why cats would need something low in Calories.

The cat in question was perched at the top of her coat closet in the entrance hall, pouncing down when the door was jolted open. It took a good slam to get it shut and Salander made fixing it at the top of her to do list for the late morning. When she walked into the master bathroom with a dustpan, she found the all the glass had already been swept up. Her rage returned and she threw the metal pan across the room, scratching the side of the tub. _Blomkvist shouldn't be the one cleaning up my messes_. She thought, lighting a cigarette on the edge of her bed. _When do I get to take care of my own problems?_ She flicked ash into a freshly emptied ashtray, swearing all the while.

For the door she had to go down to the garage, grabbing a screwdriver, drill, and a hammer. She spent until one in the afternoon redrilling and hanging the door, the result leaving a one-inch gap under the door. Another five cigarettes later left her staring at her mobile, contemplating whether or not to call Annika. She sure as hell wasn't calling a cop without assessing the severity of the situation.

If only she knew what that 'situation' was. _Fuck it_. She snatched up the phone and smashed her fingers into the touchpad numbers.

"Giannini."

"I'm not talking to the police."

"Wait, Lisbeth? I told Blom-"

"Do you know what's going on?"

"All I know is that just after ten I got a call from Bublanski that said he needed to speak with you immediately. He wouldn't elaborate at all and hung up in a huff."

"Thanks." She said through clenched teeth, hanging up in a similar manner. She still wasn't going to call Bublanski; he was a cop and that was that. No talking required. But she could still snoop through his emails. She wondered why she hadn't thought of it sooner. Bublanski was constantly emailing from his PDA. It would give her all the information she could possibly need and a lot more if she had more nefarious intentions. Svensk Polis was damn lucky she wasn't one of _those_ types of hackers.

At nine fifty-seven, Bublanski received an email from Jerker Holmberg.

_Three DNA hits came off of hairs found at Östermalm. I don't know what to make of it at all._

Bublanski replied back two minutes later.

_Who are the hits connected to?_

Holmberg took time to formulate his response back.

_Well, first you have to understand DNA or else you'll shit bricks. DNA is made of random pairs that give the individual uniqueness. Everyone has 99.999 percent the same DNA as the next guy, but about 3 million out of billions of pairs differ between individuals. So theoretically no one should have the same DNA as another. Going back to the results though, there are three hits that share the exact same DNA sequence. Lieve Petersen, a minor whose record was sealed in 1998 after emigrating elsewhere, and Lisbeth Salander._

Bublanski didn't respond back, but there was a call to Annika Giannini's number four minutes later that lasted a mere forty-seven seconds.

Salander hadn't seen her sister in almost eleven years. In six days she'd killed her mortal enemy, bombed Blomkvist's apartment, and in all probability broke into Mimmi's apartment. If fucking _Kalle Blomkvis_t hadn't rung her mobile, she could have finished the twisted bitch off once and for all.

Camilla had the computer. Lisbeth could track her all around Stockholm as long as there was an accessible Internet connection. Suddenly things were looking slightly up. The problem was that she hadn't gotten any hits in over twenty-four hours. Either she was out of range to use the Internet or she'd already disposed of the computer in the Riddarfjärden.

With a pack of Marlboro reds, a cat, and a full pot of coffee ready to go, Salander dedicated the rest of her energy researching Camilla's Belgian persona. She'd foolishly kept much of the same personal information that she had in Sweden and Salander was ashamed that she'd never thought of keeping tabs on her. She'd always believed Camilla knew where Zala had gotten off to, but it never once crossed her mind to confront her sister once more on the subject during her hunt.

While Salander was in Göteburg with a bullet in her skull, Camilla had been earning her Master of Science at Ghent. Her concentration was chemical engineering.

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	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6 Women Who Hate Men

**A/N - Hey everyone. Here's chapter 6 of what will probably be a 10-11 chapter story. Updates will probably be sporadic for a while; my track season is starting tomorrow and practice will be sucking up a good 3 hours of writing time every day from now on. **

_January 10th_

At seven fifteen sharp, Bublanski's team met with newly appointed prosecutor Denise Kristenson a week after the Bellmansgatan bombing, pouring over the latest bombshell in the case.

"White phosphorus?" Bublanski peered over his glasses at Holmberg, "You expect me to believe that Lieve Petersen somehow got a hold of white phosphorus and planted it on Mikael Blomkvist's apartment?"

"Exactly. The chemical summary report states quite plainly that there was a large quantity of white phosphorus and ANNM at Bellmansgatan 1. The body of Monica Figuerola also demonstrates severe white phosphorus burns, but her cause of death was due to inhalation of the chemical fumes. White phosphorus would also account for the large amount of white smoke that was present after the explosion."

"Lieve Petersen was a chemical engineer at the university in Ghent," Modig cut in. She shrugged as the attention suddenly diverted to her from Bublanski and Holmberg's debate, "I'm sure that it wouldn't be too difficult for someone with that background to cook up their own mix."

Prosecutor Kristenson held up a hand. "Now, I won't lay blame towards anyone here because it's no one's issue at this meeting. But how the hell did someone get…" Her eyes dropped to the report, "Five kilos of white phosphorus through customs? According to Holmberg, it ignites on contact with the air and needs to be kept in water to prevent spontaneous combustion." There was a murmur of agreement at the table among the law extension of Bublanski's team. Obviously, someone fell asleep at the wheel and would have to be reprimanded for such a grave error.

"That will be investigated in due course, but for now we need to focus on what's at hand. So far we have two fatalities and a bombing conducted with a highly restricted chemical agent."

Kristenson hopped to the next item on her agenda, "Do you have any suggestions for a motive?"

"No. But the viciousness of the murder of Teleborian should be investigated. If she wanted to just kill him she would have done so, not go out of her way to completely mutilate him while he was still alive and kicking."

"What about the Salander connection?" She asked. Bublanski's team collectively groaned.

"She pops up way too much." Was Erlander's immediate response.

"And where ever Lisbeth Salander goes, Kalle Blomkvist isn't far behind." Andersson bounced back helpfully.

"Andersson, Erlander. Enough." Bublanski snapped.

Holmberg cleared his throat, eying his very aggrevated boss, "At this point in time, I think it is fair to say that Lieve Petersen and Lisbeth Salander are identical twins. Salander does have a twin, Camilla Salander, but she's been missing from Sweden since 1998. Her personal file has been deemed classified since she turned 19 and emigrated out of Sweden."

"So Lieve Petersen is Camilla Salander?"

"It looks that way, yes." Holmberg affirmed.

"Should there be reason to suspect that Camilla Salander may be hiding with her sister?"

"None at all."

Kristenson raised an eyebrow at Bublanski's quick reply. "Bad blood?"

"They beat each other senseless the last time they saw each other. I don't think someone as uncompromising as Lisbeth would forgive someone for past transgressions if they were serious enough to warrant a sisterly beating."

Bublanski looked around at his bleary-eyed team. Holmberg especially looked ready to keel over at any moment with exhaustion.

Kristenson rubbed her temples; a headache was surely in the making. The press would have a field day when the name 'Salander' made its way into the headlines once more.

"To be perfectly clear, this whole situation just downright stinks. That being said, what are you going to do about it, Inspector Bublanski?"

"I'm not sure what we can do at this moment, Denise. The situation stinks for more than just the prosecutor's office. We're talking about a Salander here, with multiple identities and damn good street smarts." He watched her bite her lip, deep in thought. "Our greatest ally without a doubt right now is the media. If you can get them to work with you, we can move forward in this case."

The meeting continued on until nearly ten that morning. Bublanski and Kristenson agreed to call a press conference at three that afternoon. Starting at noon, screening at all customs stops would be exponentially increased to weed out anyone fitting Camilla Salander's descriptions and all ATM withdrawals with foreign ATM cards would be immediately sent to Holmberg's computer to be processed. Bublanski had every hope that she would make a mistake and be caught. The question was whether or not anyone else would go down before that happened.

Less than a four blocks from the Millennium editorial offices, Erika Berger looked out the window of the Stockholm-Slussen Hilton. It looked like they were going to be heading into their third day of icy rain. Blomkvist's profile reflected in the glass as he walked out of the bathroom, fully dressed and ready to go.

They walked arm in arm up the hill from the Hilton towards Millennium. The wind had picked up significantly and Berger regretted not bringing her car. Or at least a hooded jacket.

"Have you booked a printer for Dag's book yet?" She pulled closer to Mikael in the cold.

"Nope. I'll do that today though. Lisbeth still hasn't unlocked the file, so I'm hesitant about setting a date in stone."

"And you have no clue why she did that?"

"Well I really didn't get much time last night to speak with her." He smirked conspiratorially at Berger before donning a sober expression, "But I don't think she would do something like that without good reason. I trust her instincts completely on this." He had yet to tell Berger of his and Lisbeth's gallivanting around Greater Stockholm tracking the Wi-Fi hits from his computer. Christ, he hadn't even told her the computer had been taken. But he didn't feel like worrying her. She hid it well, but Berger was still somewhat shaken by the day they'd been in Mellqvist's when the Yugoslav mafia rolled up and opened fire on them.

Berger's mobile went off as they passed the sushi joint that Lisbeth had been talking about. He saw the hordes of cats sitting outside and instantly knew how they came to have a new furry resident at Fiskargatan 9. Berger was quick and clean in her responses, the call only lasting a few minutes.

"There's a press conference on the Teleborian murder as well as your apartment. Prosecutor Kristenson and Bublanski believe they're somehow linked together."

"What time?" He held open the door to the stairs leading up behind the Greenpeace offices to Millennium.

"Three."

"I'll see you there, then." He gave Berger a quick hug before walking another block down the street to Svartensgatan. There was a very light dusting of snow on the tin roof directly covering Lisbeth's apartment. He wondered if-with her erratic sleep schedules-she would be awake or collapsed over her computer. No doubt she'd be hunting down the woman who'd been linked to Teleborian's demise. Blomkvist shuddered as he trumped up the steps at Fiskargatan. He still couldn't get some of the more grotesque images out of his mind.

The keypad code had not changed in a year, which seemed almost like an unforgivable sin for someone like Lisbeth. Or else it was her subtle way of keeping the door to her apartment somewhat open to him. He noticed he could actually shut the door without slamming it. Salander had gone to town in fixing the thing, though it left about an inch and a half gap at floor level. Blomkvist nearly gagged at the amount of cigarette smoke that hung in the air of the apartment.

Blomkvist found Lisbeth in what would normally be considered the dining room of the luxury apartment. It was more of a second office or a strategizing room than anything in her case. Maps were strewn across the large glass table. Three pop cans were overflowing with cigarette butts. And Lisbeth was slumped over onto her laptop in strangest position possible, dead asleep with the cat tucked in across her lap. He couldn't resist snapping a few pictures with his phone. They might come in handy for bartering for his files, but he knew the futility of it. It would still be fun to tease, though.

The cat saw him and seemed to think it was feeding time, hopping down with a surprisingly loud thud. Lisbeth seemed to wake slightly, muttering a 'fuck off' before turning her head to face away from the kitchen light. _At least she doesn't have a Taser in her hand this time_. The cat began to yowl at him so he picked up the morbidly obese animal and carried it off the kitchen, shutting the door so just a sliver of light spilt into the dining room.

At quarter past seven, Björn Sandberg pulled his golden Saab into the Svavelsjö MC garage in Norrmalm. Their numbers within the club had diminished by over half and left him with a substantial amount of bookwork to go over, but after the flop with Niedermann, the amount of account balancing had also decreased exponentially.

The books in question were located behind a spare parts cabinet in a defunct air vent in the main garage that needed one strong son of a bitch to move, but Sandberg had cut a false backend out of the cabinet for easier access. All his brawny boys were locked up, anyways.

He pulled out three A4 binders from the vent. When he turned around he came face to face with the barrel of a Glock.

"Drop the folders and turn around." He hesitated, looking down the barrel of the Glock and up at the covered face of the woman holding it. Fuck. Her voice told him everything; 'f_art and I will blow your brains across the bricks._' The files slumped from his arms onto the floor. A strip of duct tape was secured across his mouth.

"Are you right or left handed? Hold up your dominant hand." Sandberg held up his right. His left hand was then taped firmly to his side, the gun pressed solidly into his back the entire time. "Move."

She brought him to a bar stool somewhere inside the main room. Plastic crinkled under his feet as she steered him around the lumpy couch that sat in the center of the room. His nose bumped into something hanging from the ceiling. He had a pretty good idea of what it was. She instructed him to hop on the bar stool in front of the bar, which was just high enough that his feet couldn't touch the floor. When she had the noose secured firmly around his neck, she flipped the light on.

A pen was shoved into his hand by a hand covered by a leather glove.

"I want you to write down the names of anyone living that knows Ronald Niedermann or the business he conducted here. I don't care if they're in prison, dead, or have four kids and a dog. I also want to know when you and I should be expecting company."

The woman pulled a notebook out of a tall hiking backpack and slid it across the table. She pulled back the black balaclava she'd stolen from the motorcyclist's helmet two days previously. Sandberg's eyes widened and flicked to the TV hanging above the bar. The same crossbeam that held it was also currently supporting the orange electrical cord noose around his neck.

Camilla followed his gaze. "That's nice. You know who I am. Can you write down what I did to the psychiatrist in Östermalm for me?"

_You killed him._

"No, he killed himself. I simply tortured him. He hung himself by squirming too much in the end." She pressed his shaking hand into the paper of the notebook. "Write. Names, addresses."

He came up with a total of eleven people. Five were dead. Two were in prison for a combined sentence total of eighty-seven years. One was a pimp in Uppsala and the other three were weapon traffickers for the Yugoslav mafia. Camilla looked pleased at his list.

"You know," she placed the gun mockingly just out of his reach as she went through the bright blue hiking bag on the counter, "You forgot _one_person on your list."

_No. That's it._

"No, no. You definitely forgot someone." She pulled out a suppressor from the bag and attached it to the pistol. "You." The crack wasn't as loud as she thought it would be.

The Svavelsjö clubhouse was formerly a meat packing plant and provided a still functioning cool room. When she cut down the shot and hung Sandberg, she dragged him off on a tarp placed under the stool to minus three-degree room. She couldn't do much about the blood spatter on the sofa, but it would go easily unnoticed once it dried.

Sandberg's car was still idling in the garage. She slipped a large balloon over the exhaust before searching for anything of use in his trunk. It was completely bare save for a tire iron that she could think of no use for other than clubbing someone over the head with. If his scrawl could be believed, no one would show up for another two days to open up the chop shop. It gave her enough time to set up in one of the club's discreet side rooms.

She picked up the A4s Sandberg dropped in the garage and threw them all into the fireplace along with three hundred grams of white phosphorus. With a few turnovers using a poker and all the evidence of Svavelsjö's dealings with Niedermann was reduced to black dust. There were still a few lowlife drug dealers and weapon traffickers she would have to deal with before disappearing from Sweden altogether, but she still had to create the means to deal with them.

Most of what she needed could be bought at a hardware or homecare store. She'd bugged out of Belgium with the rest. Twenty kilos of white phosphorus plainly labeled and ten liters of hydrochloric acid that only required a red tag to be carried on the train. She would never get that lucky again, but she could always make cheap substitutes with store bought products.

Camilla sat down on a clean sofa, feet propped up on a coffee table as she watched the morning news. She was still regarded as breaking news across Sweden. Both her driver's license photo from 2002 and the grainy security video from Östermalm were being shown. There was a 100,000 krona reward for information leading to her arrest.

Mikael Blomkvist was confirmed as alive and well directly after she was deemed armed and dangerous. She didn't really care. Though if the rumors she'd heard around the Stockholm tabloids were true, then she might be able to locate Lisbeth using him. She didn't know whether or not to put much stock in that idea, but she couldn't help but think about her strange encounter with the two of them four days ago. Lisbeth had been sitting on one of the central station benches obviously looking for someone and not fifteen minutes later, Camilla literally walked into Mikael Blomkvist as she was heading out of the McDonald's above T-Central. She decided it was an idea worth at least some investigation.

She discovered that there was no Internet connection anywhere to be found within the clubhouse and had to walk three blocks to the Hötorget tunnelbana station. Nothing of interest popped up in that regards, but a journalist by the name of Tony Scala was supposedly writing an unauthorized biography of Mikael Blomkvist. A quick search gave her an address. It was entirely too easy. At the clubhouse she pulled the half full balloon off of the tailpipe of the car. She'd set her tools up later, but for now she tied it off and stuck it behind the bar with her backpack.

Salander woke to a pair of bright green eyes staring at her from across the table. The sun was up, but she wasn't sure how long she'd been out for. One minute she was rewriting asphyxia to work on mobile phones, the next minute she wakes up to the freakishly large brown cat less than a foot from her face. She was pretty sure at some point that morning Blomkvist had come in, but she'd paid him no attention.

Her back was sore as fuck, but she was pleased to see she'd successfully modified asphyxia before nodding off. Her search parameters for Camilla had been much less successful, but she could always change them around later. There was a somewhat fresh pot of coffee left on the machine. She wondered if she should be surprised that he came back after one of his stays with Berger.

Halfway through making a quick sandwich, her landline began to ring. The cat eyed the food on the counter, ready to strike.

"Don't you think about it," She grabbed the phone from the cradle, "Hello?"

"This is your morning wake up call, courtesy of Millennium."

"You're too late."

"Well in that case I have three things to say, then I'll bugger off for a while. First, unlock my files. Two, apparently someone toilet trained the cat but didn't teach it to flush. Three, Dragan Armansky called and would like to know if you were interested in some sort of job offer. Bye."

Her brow furrowed. Cat? Toilet trained? It was too early for toilet train-wait, job offer? The cat protested loudly when she took her sandwich away from the warm spot on the coffee machine and into the dining room. _What could Armansky be up to?_

There weren't any 'interesting' cases that she could see in his active client list. There was a recent retirement notice, though.

She picked up her phone, dialing Armansky's direct line while skimming through the retirement notice. She had no clue who the hell the person was, but noticed they came out of Milton's 'operational' division.

"Armansky."

"I heard you had a job offer."

"I'll have a job opening as of February twelfth. It's a permanent position."

"Operations?"

Armanksy hesitated on the other end of the line. "Yes. Operations."

"I'm interested."

"Come in today and I'll see if I can pull some strings within the division, then. Take some rings out of your face and give your hair a good scrub down with some dish soap. The divisional chief doesn't take well to punk queens." The phone clicked off on the opposite end.

For the first time in a long while, Salander smiled. As much as she loved her computer and it's ability to help her fuck with the lives of assholes from a safe distance, her time in Hedestad had set in motion her interest in fieldwork. She could still fuck with people, but on a larger, more personal scale.

The cat hopped up onto the table next to her, cleaning the plate as Salander sat in thought. The only problem was she'd have to work with other people. There was a chain of command and she'd naturally start and probably stay at the lower rung. The offer seemed to have completely come out of the blue, but Salander knew Armansky was a calculating as she was. There was definitely a motive somewhere, how ever miniscule or obscure it was.

She reasoned that the most logical first step would be to research the person she was possibly going to succeed. Salander was surprised that it was a woman. _Alice Thorsen, 46, former municipal police officer, currently working as a security consult and counter-measures chief._ Definitely interesting set of shoes to fill that wouldn't get boring for a while.

Salander grabbed her keys off the coffee table. She was in the middle of find a 'normal' looking jacket that Mimmi might have left in the coat closet when her computer began to beep. The bitch was online! She shoved the cat off the dining room chair as she watched Camilla perform the search 'Lisbeth Salander + Mikael Blomkvist.' _What the fuck?_ There wasn't much more than aimless scrolling that followed. After five minutes, the search parameters changed to just 'Mikael Blomkvist + life.' A press report to the writing of an unauthorized biography came up, written by none other than the shithead Tony Scala. Another window opened, with a query on the residence of the asshole journalist. Was she thinking of dropping in on him?

The computer went offline after that and Lisbeth wasted no time grabbing the first jacket she saw out of the coat closet before sprinting down the steps to her car. This time she wasn't going to let the bitch escape without her doing something about it first!

Tony Scala stood and stretched in front of his desktop PC. He was almost through with editing his latest work on Mikael Blomkvist. Another week and he'd send it off the printers. It was his chance to really make it big. There was enough hype that the book was already being projected as a best seller based on pre-sales alone.

Moze, his trusted sidekick and longhaired wiener dog was lounging on the sofa when Scala heard a banging at the door. Its floppy ears perked slightly, but the dog was otherwise still as a statue.

"Moze. Door." The dog gave a non-committal half-bark before laying it head down once again.

He shook his head as he turned the deadbolt to the front door. "Some dog you are."

"Hello?" He stuck his head out the door to find a woman holding a notepad and pen. An Internet blogger.

"Tony Scala? Hi, my name is Eli Laastad. I was wondering if you could give me some details on your upcoming biography on Mikael Blomkvist?"

Scala didn't see the Taser slip from her pocket until 50,000 volts of electricity were sent shooting through his thigh.

Salander narrowly missed colliding with a golden Saab on Sveavägen as she slid in behind its vacated parking space. Tony Scala, third floor, unit seven. The door was to the apartment was unlocked just as it had been in Lundagatan. Salander found Scala handcuffed to an old radiator in his office.

"Fuck, not you too! I don't know anything! Fuck!" Salander noticed he was trying to reach for the handcuff key dangling from an end table inches out of his reach. The wiener dog she'd seen on the couch came over to investigate, sniffing and growling at her feet before wandering off.

"Look here and stop fidgeting or I'll toss the key down your sink drain! I don't give a shit for journalists like you, but you're going to tell me what the bitch who chained you up wanted."

"Who the fu- shit you're Lisbeth Salander! Fuck, I'm sorry about all the shit I printed, I swear! Please don't do anything to me, please!"

Salander ignored his profuse apologies and waited for him to realize she was his only ticket to being unchained. She didn't give a shit if he went out and bought her roses and kept apologizing every fucking day for the rest of his life. He'd gone out and destroyed much of Mimmi's life with his printings. Had he not already been chained up to something she was damn sure she would have done it herself.

His blubbering finally came to an end, "Fuck, okay, okay. This chick with black hair tased me when I opened the door. Then I come to and I'm handcuffed here. She wouldn't stop zapping me and kept asking me if I knew where you or Mikael Blomkvist was hiding. She literally just left five minutes before you got here!"

Salander looked down at the chained reporter. She could see the burns where he'd been zapped. But he was still leaving out the most crucial piece of information.

"And what did you tell her?"

"I'm a journalist, not a fucking forensic person! I don't hunt down people who are supposedly dead!" He started shaking the handcuff on the radiator, "Can you just unchain me already?"

"No. Shut up." She dangled the key in front of his face like a reward for his shitty behavior. "You will not scream, bang, or make any noise draws attention to yourself once I leave. I'm going to tie the key to your dog's collar. You can free yourself when the dog sees fit. After that I don't give a shit what do, who you call, or what you print, but you will not mention that I was here."

The dog skittered over on overgrown toenails when she whistled for it. It was a feisty little rat that Scala would definitely have fun trying to coax over to him once she left. She checked the time on her phone as she shut the door to unit seven behind her. Armansky hadn't been specific about when to show up but since she was on this side of Riddarfjärden she might as well drop in on her way home.

The rain really let loose when Salander walked out of the building. A ticket was stuck in between her windshield wipers; apparently she parked in a nonexistent handicapped zone. She gunned the car, watching the paper disintegrate in the rain as the ominous concrete Milton building rose above the Slussen interchange. She could see a silhouette staring down from Armansky's office on the fifth floor as she pulled into the underground parking structure.

Armansky looked up at the sound of his glass door sliding open. "You're soaking wet, for God's sake! Were you frolicking in the rain before coming here or something?" He walked around to his desk, throwing a rubber band at her, "Just tie your hair back and take a seat."

"I didn't have time to wash the dye out. Are you still serious about Operations?"

"If you're still seriously interested yes." Salander nodded as Armansky's expression became serious, "But you _will_ hear me out before I take you down to the division chief. This isn't a job for loose cannons. You don't set your hours and there is a chain of command that you _will_ follow."

Salander thought as much.

"If you refuse an assignment, you're fired. If you piss off someone higher up than you, you're fired. From this point on, your job at Milton is up to the whims of Jaben Singh. You need to accept that before we go any further."

Salander was beginning to like the sound of Operations less and less, but she bit her tongue and went along with Armansky to the seventh floor. It was an area of Milton she might have ventured into once during her stint as a nineteen-year-old coffee goffer, but if was a completely different world compared to the other six floors of Milton. It had a dark, almost subterranean look to it that put Plague's hacker hole to shame.

Armansky opened a door to a conference room tucked at the very back of the open floor. A man wearing a turban sat at the center table typing on an extremely small notebook computer. Alice Thorsen was looking over his shoulder and was the first to notice them both, smiling politely.

Singh pointed to the unoccupied side of the table. "Take a seat Dragan," he shut the lid to his notebook, "Salander, am I right?"

"Yes."

"Good." He made a gesture with his hand and Thorsen promptly stepped out.

"I've spent the last few days taking a good hard look at you, Lisbeth. Dragan, here, took it upon himself to put together a portfolio of the work and reports that you completed from 1999 to 2003. I find no fault in them at all and your attention to detail is beyond anything I've seen."

He paused for effect and Salander could tell that if he weren't a fucking giant no one would really care for what he had to say. She just wanted him to cut the chase, no flash or flair required. She stared at him in the exact way Armansky told her not to do. It had the right effect and he quickly hopped to.

"There are, however, some shortcomings in your own background that cannot be ignored. You lack formal training in the most basic of security protocol and you just recently passed your CEE when you should have already done it ten years ago. Am I right so far?"

Salander was about to nod but Armansky subtly banged on the back of her chair. Use words. "Yes."

"I very much want to hire you, Lisbeth, but your lack of training poses a significant issue to be admitted into this division."

Singh opened his laptop and Salander took that as an opportunity to glare at Armansky. _Fucking Armenian_. She could feel the shoot down coming from a mile away. Leave it to Armansky to let her get a glimpse at her former Milton goal and then take it all away.

Singh turned the laptop to face them both. Salander had to squint at the screen to read the miniature print, but didn't dare make a move to change the font size.

"But because I'm so brutally stubborn when I see such a good deal such as yourself," Salander's eyes narrowed at his choice of words, "Myself and Armansky are willing to put you on the X2000 to Göteborg tomorrow morning to get you the needed training."

"You're serious?"

"Very." Armansky cut in, smiling at her. Fucking Armenian, she thought once again. It felt too damn good to be true.

"How long can I wait on this?"

"You can't. The training starts in two days and only happens twice a year. You need to be on the train to-mor-row," he pounded his thick fist on the desk for emphasis, "Or no Operations."

"What do I sign?"

The Sikh motioned for the computer. "Just register yourself for the courses and get your ass on the train tomorrow. You don't have to sign anything until you complete the training."

She looked at him skeptically while her fingers flitted across the keyboard. When it was all said and done, Singh just opened the door and pointed her in the direction of the elevators. She took the stairs to the roof instead and lit a cigarette, looking out towards the bright lights of Greater Stockholm. Somewhere out there, her bitch sister was planning absolute fucking chaos and trying to suck herself and Blomkvist into her sick mess. She realized it wasn't a job she could do alone.

The rain had stopped when she chose to ring up Plague. "I need an assistant for three weeks."

"Hi to you, too." It sounded like he was playing some sort of video game in the background.

"I need someone good tailing."

"Why's that?" Plague asked.

"I'm going to be out of Stockholm for a while and need someone to tail someone else while I'm gone."

"What's your rate?"

"Twenty grand a week plus a discretion tip."

"I have someone in mind. I'll give you his Hotmail address and you two can figure the rest out."

"Thanks."

Salander finished off her cigarette and flicked it over the edge of the roof onto the street below before heading back down to the parking garage. The dashboard clock in her car said it was half past seven, but the significance of the time was lost on her.

At home she did a thorough inspection of the apartment and found nothing out of place except for a shoe. She found it on the balcony along with the cat splayed out on its back trying to rip the laces out of her favorite shoes.

She inched closer to it, "Drop the shoe, demon-"

"So you finally named it?" She turned around to see Blomkvist throw his jacket on the back of the sofa. The cat took her slip of attention as its chance to bolt, leaving the mutilated shoe behind.

"Demon? Sure." She held the shoe up for his own inspection. "Keep it away from my shit while I take a shower."

Salander grabbed a bottle of dish soap from the kitchen before starting up the shower. For the first time in over ten years, her hair was restored to its natural coppery-red color. She could see why Armansky was adamant about making the change. She sure as fuck didn't look like Lisbeth Satanic Lesbian Salander anymore. With a startling clarity, she realized how much she looked like her mother. Red was her color. Black was Zala-fucking-Chenko's. She made sure to spray the last of that color down the drain before digging out a small suitcase from the master closet.

A knock came from door to the room as she threw the t-shirt into the bag. "It's open."

Blomkvist took one step in before looking at her completely naked backside while she rummaged deeper into her closet, "I'll just wa-"

"Shut up and come in here, Mikael." Salander slammed the wardrobe shut as Blomkvist walked in, tossing a rolled up sock from the top of her dresser at him. "Open it."

She lit a cigarette as he shook the contents of the bag onto the bed. Something black with yellow stripes rolled out. Her Taser.

"Push the button in," she pressed her thumb over his and watched the electrodes spark to life, "and it'll knock someone on their ass long enough for you to run. Try not to zap yourself if you use it, OK?"

Blomkvist had no idea how to respond to her sudden gift. He'd been to the press conference and had heard the news about the unlikely evidence linking yet another Salander relation to a heinous crime. Was she going to go after her sister just as she had Zalachenko? He looked her square in the eyes and knew that that at least wasn't her first intention.

"You should put some clothes on," he said finally, standing with her latest gift jammed in his pocket.

"Or you could take some off," she countered with a peculiar look in her eye.

She stood and closed the distance between them in three steps, expertly unhooking his belt as her lips moved roughly against his. Her actions took him by complete surprise and he soon found himself pressed against the wall as Salander assaulted his lips with her own, while she worked her way through the fastenings of his pants.

The next morning, Blomkvist let his hand drift to Salander's side of the bed, finding the Taser resting neatly in the molded form of the bed where Lisbeth had been only hours before. A small piece of paper was tucked into one of the folds.

With bleary eyes, he read a hastily composed note in her frustratingly neat scrawl.

_I'll be back Friday night. Don't zap "Demon."_

**I am a complete awkward turtle when it comes to lemons/limes/citrus fruit in writing. Don't shoot me for the scene above. Constructive criticism is mucho wanted for this chapter; don't let me down!**

**Follow me on tumblr for daily updates and tidbits on Women Who Hate Men. **

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	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7 Women Who Hate Men

**A/N – This chapter is a bit shorter as it doesn't feature much of Blomkvist or Lisbeth. Next chapter it gets awesome!**

_January 11th - 18th_

At five minutes to five, the X2000 to Göteborg pulled into Central Station. With a fur-fringed hood pulled low over her face, Lisbeth boarded onto one of the first class cars. She picked a seat at the very back where she had a full view of anyone in the car. An elderly couple took their seats at the front just as the doors closed. When the train started to creep out of the station, she pulled her laptop out and skimmed through her emails. Plague had kept his promise and hooked her up with a possible up and coming member of the Hacker Republic, a twenty-one year old known only on the Internet as Janne. According to Plague he was currently unemployed, making him an excellent choice for chasing Camilla around Stockholm at a moments notice.

She typed up a quick email to Janne's Hotmail account with an attachment to her Asphyxia Mobile prototype before stowing the laptop in her shoulder bag. Chasing Mikael's laptop around was getting old. Camilla had at least three prepaid phones on her person and probably had a personal phone switched on. If her lackey could catch Camilla at just the right moment, the hunt would become childs play for Salander.

Lisbeth waited until the train pulled out of Katrineholm station before getting up to head towards the buffet car. She stocked up on relatively cheap cigarettes at the counter and bought copies of _Dagens Nyheter_ and _Expressen _before wandering back to her seat. The car was relatively empty, leaving her free to sprawl out with her back to the window and feet hanging in the aisle without anyone bitching about it.

She found Tony Scala's assault at the top of page two in _DN_, but was relieved that her involvement was nowhere to be noted. However,_Expressen_ had gone to the extreme with the new information on Lieve Petersen's identity.

Salander was getting really fucking tired of her old passport picture being plastered all over the Swedish media.

The headline was proclaimed 'The Salander Sisters' in thick size seventy-two font and featured her passport picture and Camilla's Belgian drivers license side-by-side. Salander could so no relation of any sort between the pictures. She tossed the paper onto an empty seat across the aisle before cracking open the window to light a cigarette.

Teetering on the edge of an armchair, Camilla passed an old vacuum tube between the vents linking the Svavelsjö MC bathroom to what she presumed was Sandberg's 'office.' She'd barely finished sealing the vent when a loud thumping could be heard coming from the garage. She picked up her suppressed Glock from the edge of the sink before creeping out into the main area.

She could hear the scrape of the garage door being lifted as she stood at the ready behind the bar. Two sets of footsteps shuffled through the garage. She'd barely ducked behind the bar when the door suddenly flung open.

"Sandberg! We know you're here!" Serbs. Camilla was in luck; they were the same men Sandberg had listed out for her. Through a hole in the bar she could see they were carrying broken down Uzis as they scanned the main room. Several times their eyes would skim over the very section of the bar she was hiding behind. The taller one shrugged before walking off down the hall.

When she could hear their footsteps on the creaking floor of Sandberg's office, she set off to creep down the hall after them. Drawers were slammed around as she darted past the open office door. It opened and closed from the outside and there was a sturdy old chair sitting in the center of the hallway. When a particularly heavy file cabinet fell to the floor, she slammed the door to the office shut and pushed the chair up against the door. Time for phase two.

Stored under the bathroom sink were several gallon jugs of bleach. It also happened to be that there were still several old containers of browning ammonia left over in the dark recesses of the former meatpacking warehouse. Their fists hammered away mercilessly at the door as she flipped on the horrendously loud fan in the ceiling, drowning out all of their protests and cries as she dumped the ammonia and bleach into a cleaning bucket.

The effects were instant and Camilla shoved a few rags into the cracks under both the bathroom and office doors as the whitish cloud of chloramine wafted from under them, the men's screaming reducing to a gurgle.

She blinked her eyes, a slight sting in them. She'd had worse before, when she had real chemicals at her disposal, not diluted bathroom cleaners. Those were teenager and wannabe anarchist toys. Her _real _arsenal was packed away safely in several locations around Stockholm from her several stakeout trips in the months before.

She'd known it would be a long job and had prepared accordingly. The phosphorus was the only chemical she had readily available at any given time, but caches of chlorine, phosgene, and a few of her own chemical creations could be easily retrieved when needed. But now she found that she didn't have enough to get the job done if Sandberg's list was accurate. She'd have to schedule a restock trip before she could move forward any farther.

The noise in the office had died down substantially. At this stage they were likely beyond help and probably unconscious with the high concentration she'd pumped into the room. But they had guns, and _that_ was the problem. A dying man could still shoot; she'd learned that lesson the hard way in one of her first dealings of the armed variety. No, better wait a while longer, she decided.

Waiting wasn't really her thing, though. Mikael Blomkvist's beat up little Mac sat on the bar counter with Sandberg's list resting on top of the keyboard. She could leave whenever she wanted and walk off to the Hötorget tunnelbana, but certain precautions were required. Like shoving a mostly empty bookcase in front of the office door.

With her bags were thrown into the back of Sandberg's trunk, her presence in the gang clubhouse was completely erased. She still expected some company; the chop shop attached to the alleyway was still in business. Supposedly two members worked there during the late week, but today proved that odd drop-ins from members and nonmembers were common. She stuck her silenced pistol in the glove compartment before reversing into the alleyway.

About twenty minutes northwest of Norrmalm clubhouse, Camilla turned the golden Saab onto a side street a block from a generic public storage facility. The unit she had the key to was a dinky little eight by four foot room, but served its main purpose well. Gas tanks didn't take up much space, after all. The facility had strict measures on what could be kept within the lockers, but with a little creativity she could sneak out several gas cylinders conveniently labeled as 'helium' and a gas mask without the early morning guard batting an eye.

With the cylinders stowed in the backseat under a blanket, Camilla turned back towards Stockholm, her pistol tucked into the door panel to entire time.

Across from Hötorget tunnelbana, Hacker Republic hopeful Janne sat in the Burger King overlooking Sveavägen. His third cup of coffee sat on top of the morning copy of _Expressen_, completely covering Lisbeth Salander's face. Plague had sent him a job offer again, but the purse was too high to be just Plague alone. Janne immediately expressed his interest and had been rewarded by an email by another hacker known only as Wasp.

For 20,000 krona a week, he had to stakeout the Hötorget, T-Central, and Slussen tunnelbana stations for a short, black haired, twenty-seven year old woman carrying a 2004 MacBook with a Swedish flag decal on the lid. It was possibly the easiest money he had ever made.

He opened up his Hotmail account, finding two emails from Wasp. One was a program named Asphyxia that could be downloaded onto a micro SD card and transferred onto a mobile phone in less than a minute. Somehow he had to get a hold of the woman's phone and place the Asphyxia program on it to get any future paychecks. The next email was an electronic bank statement remarking on the transfer of 20,000 krona from Wasp Enterprises to his own account and a link to a Yahoo! group. Wasp was still online.

**Hello?** He typed.

**Do you understand what you need to do?** Wasp typed back. It seemed that whoever this person was did not fancy small talk.

**Yes**.

**Anytime you see someone fitting the description I gave you, post a picture to this group. I'll answer back on whether or not to proceed**_._ Wasp typed.

**Got it. What does Asphyxia do?** Janne typed.

Wasp didn't answer back, but remained online, lurking in the background of the group.

An hour later, the group chat blipped to life. Janne had been listening to a podcast and nearly spilt a fifth coffee across his keyboard at the sound.

**T-Central McDonalds**.

He didn't argue, but packed up his laptop and unlocked his bike from the rack before pedaling fiercely down several alleys towards T-Central tunnelbana. His eyes immediately fell on the Mac with the Swede flag on the lid, being used by a pale woman wearing a beanie over wavy black hair. Janna walked without seeming to care, snapping a picture of her general profile once he'd established himself at a table directly behind her. Wasp's busy icon changed to online five minutes later.

**Y**.

The chat icon switched offline before he could add anything else.

Janne resisted the urge to fist pump. Of course, without Wasp he wouldn't have found the woman, but still, she was here and that meant his next paycheck was that much closer. He could see in the reflection on his screen that a phone was laying just to the left of the woman's hand.

As he thought of the different scenarios that could possibly land her Blackberry in his hands, it began to vibrate across the counter.

"Hey." The woman answered in singsong German. Her voice instantly grated on Janne's nerves as he opened up his old dictation software from his time at university.

"Give me two more week weeks. No, but two of them are all the way out in fucking Malmö!"

Janne typed furiously to fill in some of the translation errors as she packed up her laptop, raising her voice towards the caller. Her accent was throwing the software completely off, and he couldn't place his finger on how to change around the program to be more accurate.

"Open up a fucking map if you don't know where that is, it's not my problem you're as ignorant as an American." She snapped the phone shut and stuck it in her left front pocket.

Conversation over, Janne also shut his laptop, walking out to the Seven Eleven attached to the tunnelbana entrance. The woman was still in the McDonalds, ordering something from the counter. He waited patiently, transferring and re-reading the call transcript on his PDA before sending it to the Yahoo! group.

The woman walked out five minutes later, walking towards the tunnelbana station while carrying a coffee and a newspaper. Her phone was sticking halfway out of her left pocket, begging for a pair of quick hands to grab it.

Janne hitched his laptop bag to his opposite shoulder before walking full speed towards the woman, eyes down with phone pressed against his ear in a perfect model of inattentiveness. When she was close enough he veered directly into her shoulder, knocking her off balance as an empty hand delved into her pocket and locked around the Blackberry, slipping it into the pouch of his laptop bag.

He looked down in concern as the woman tried to get up. He hadn't meant to nail her _that_ hard. Janne held out a hand, pulling her up. "Sorry about that. You alright?"

"Fine, fine, thank you," she responded, already heading off towards the tunnelbana entrance. He turned to follow her, slipping the micro SD card into the phone. It took less than thirty seconds to download, about half the trip down the tunnelbana escalator.

The woman turned around on the train just in time to see him running at her, phone in hand while he jammed his foot between the doors to keep the train from moving. "You dropped this."

"Oh, supposed I did." The door to the train closed shut as she mouthed, "Thanks."

When the train pulled out he checked the destination. Hötorget station.

It wasn't until four days later that Salander finally had the time to open up her laptop to inspect Janne's handiwork. Her iPhone died and she'd left the charger at home, plunging her into a period of technological abstinence. The days passed with brutal slowness, her days spent in the same classroom setting she'd hated as a teen, listening to a lecture on the history of Swedish law.

Four days down, eleven more to go. Tomorrow she would take the last evening train back to Stockholm for two days of recoup and reassessment of how to go about putting Camilla out of business.

Her desktop was beginning to get cluttered with all of the hard drive copies she had managed to collect. A new folder had popped up since she'd last checked, labeled CS-Mobile. She right clicked 'open,' not knowing where to start. It was half past eleven at night and she was too fucking tired to read through every single file that had collected in the folder.

First, she decided, she would transfer the entire contacts list into a separate folder. Two contacts, JS and HS, stood out the most. The number traced back to somewhere in Estonia, but she would have to wait for a call to pinpoint the exact location. It gave her a slight case of the creeps. Zalachenko had deep roots in Estonia, especially Tallinn. Salander was beginning to think that the family business was still thriving, even without Zalachenko at the helm.

In another window, Salander opened up her coordinate tracking site and plugged in the coordinates of Camilla's calls. Five had been made from inside the Svavelsjö clubhouse in Norrmalm over the last nine days. It didn't make any sense, but she'd be damn sure to check up on that particular lead when she was back in Stockholm.

It was only after another hour of reading through Camilla's phone contents that she finally closed the lid to her Mac and flopped down on the dinky little hotel bed she'd been using. She missed her king sized bed at Fiskargatan. She also missed a certain bedmate, but would be damned if she truly admitted _that_.

In Norrmalm, Camilla walked into the former archive room of the biker clubhouse, this time armed with a gas mask. At her feet were two, very dead Yugoslavs, their Uzi's held stiffly in their rigored hands. One by one, she dragged them both back to the cool room. The excess chloramine gas poured out of the room slowly, creating a cloud of pale green gas a hanging a few inches off the floor.

Her bright idea had rendered the building unusable. It was time to clear out. The ferry to Tallinn left at six the next morning. Apparently the Yugoslavs in Malmö could wait. There were…issues in Tallinn that were more imperative than hunting down gun traffickers.

But Camilla wasn't about to just leave three bodies so easily open to discovery in the clubhouse now that she had to take her leave. She fished out her bag from Sandberg's car, pulling the airtight jar of white phosphorus out. In the main room she filled a pail with water and dropped a four-kilo hunk of phosphorus in it, a prepaid cell phone encased in the pale yellow block.

With the phosphorus safely submerged, she snapped a leg off of one of the barstools. She had to choose her target carefully. What was the most likely entrance that would be used if anyone decided to come trumping in? It was a fifty-fifty split between the front door and the garage entrance. Or there was always the door leading towards the archive and cool rooms. She decided on the latter, propping the broken stool against the door with the pail balancing precariously on the seat. By midnight, Camilla crawled into Sandberg's Saab for a quick nap away from the chloramine fumes, but was up and ready to join the ferry line up by four. She failed to notice a black, nondescript van parked half a block up the alley as she pulled away towards Sveavägen.

Salander waited to the X2000 cleared Alingsås before opening up her laptop. There were five emails waiting for her. Two were emails with transcripts of all the calls Camilla had made in the last two days. Another two were spam emails that were quickly sent to the trash. The final one was from Blomkvist, sent three hours ago with a link to _Dagens Nyheter_. She shot off a response to pick her up at Central Station at 11:30. The link sent her to the front page of _DN_.

'**Three Bodies Discovered Inside Svavelsjö MC Clubhouse, White Phosphorus Explosion Injures Two Investigators'**

Besides the obvious, there was a brief nod to the 'sadistic' murder of Niedermann who was incorrectly referred to as Ronald Lieberman and Svavelsjö's small part in the investigation into her supposed triple murder spree. Salander was surprised they hadn't listed Camilla as the suspect. The phosphorus bomb was a complete giveaway. In the buffet car, she picked up a more descriptive copy of the _DN_, the bombing taking over the headlines.

Salander read through the article three times before switching her laptop to look over the mobile transcripts Janne had typed out for her. Camilla had cleared out of Sweden earlier that morning and was laying low with someone by the name of Jarrod. The name sounded strangely familiar, but she buried the thought at the back of her mind as she skimmed through the last transcript. It was a call to a taxi company for a ride from the Tallinn-Stockholm ferry to a small township an hour east of Tallinn.

An hour later, the train crept into Central Station. Her little Honda sat outside in the roundabout, Blomkvist reading a copy of _Aftonbladet_ under the flickering dome light with his iPod plugged in. He was a complete sitting duck and jumped when she banged on the hood as she passed by.

"Hey, hey."

"Hey. Did you get the link I sent you?"

"Yes."

"And?"

She shrugged. "I have a hunch."

**This was a pretty short transitional chapter. Feels kind of weird to have only written 8 pages. Fun stuff starts next chapter! Please review!**

**Follow me on tumblr for daily updates and tidbits on Women Who Hate Men. **

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	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8 Women Who Hate Men

**A/N – Shorter chapters now just to balance out for the long breaks in posts. This is total almost GWTDT running around chasing baddies chapter, which also means it's completely Mikael and Blomkvist this time. The Hacker Republic also makes another guest appearance! **

_January 19th – 21th_

Blomkvist rested his head absently on his hand, watching the sleeping figure pressed firmly into his chest. He'd been awake for some time, cherishing the closeness they only seemed to share when Salander slowly managed to scoot back towards him in her sleep.

Despite the lack of activity, Blomkvist was far from bored. In the faint, overcast light he studied her recent binary wasp tattoo with more scrutiny. While she had been in Göteborg, he'd researched the basic principles of the binary alphabet. Looking down in her prone form, he figured he hat worked out about a tenth of the tattoo. Something about spider webs and hornets. At least that's what he thought it meant.

A slight groan brought his attention to Salander as she nestled her face further into his chest. Her breathing changed as the half smirk she wore in her sleep turn to a frown.

He could just barely make out her mumbled acknowledgement to her pillow, "Hey."

"Hey yourself."

"Wake me up later."

With that, she rolled over onto her stomach and exposed her menacing dragon tattoo in the faint light as she pushed him to the very edge of the king sized bed. How someone her size could suddenly take up an entire bed, he didn't understand, but he got the message nonetheless and relocated to the shower in the adjacent master bath.

When he stepped out of the bathroom and into the kitchen fifteen minutes later, Lisbeth was practically crawling into the cavernous fridge.

"You said you had a hunch last night."

"Camilla is working for someone named Jarrod in Estonia. Pretty powerful fucker by the looks of it; he deals with the Yugoslavs and the bikers, so obvious weapon and drug connections there. He's no slouch, but won't get his hands in the dirty work." She said, turning around to face him with a plate of leftover pizza. Her baggy black t-shirt proclaimed 'Schrödinger's Cat is Dead' in courier typeface.

He looked down at the leftover pizza they'd gone and bought the night before. "_That_ looks incredibly disgusting the morning after."

Lisbeth made a noncommittal sound as she slid the pizza into the microwave and punched in a time of three minutes before walking into the living room where her laptop was charging.

"This Jarrod guy, is his last initial S?" Her head snapped up from her computer, glaring at him with a look that plainly said, '_speak before I torture the words out of you._' He believed the silent threat wholeheartedly.

Here," he came up behind the couch and dropped her pizza in front of her before leaning over her shoulder and opening up a google image search.

"Is Jarrod Shröder. He heads off one of the biggest crime networks in Europe. He's been charged but never found guilty of murder, weapon trafficking, drug trafficking, and human trafficking."

Blomkvist saw a muscular man of about thirty with black, crew cut hair. Salander saw black eyes and a familiar weak face.

'_You have at least four more brothers and three sisters in various countries. One of your brothers is an idiot, but another actually has potential. He runs the Tallinn arm of the business.'_

Son of a bitch.

Salander stared at the picture and lit a cigarette. The more she looked, the more she could see the similarities between all of the Zalachenko men. Dark eyes, high foreheads, and a wiry, strong build were common among all of them except for the freak Niedermann. Supposedly there were still at least six more Zala clones out there in the world that she would have to contend with as well.

She took another long drag, blowing the smoke up into Blomkvist's face."Where would I find the fucker?"

"Protective custody, most likely."

"That doesn't mean shit to me." The cat's ears pricked slightly at the rough edge in her voice. "Where? Compound, penthouse, underground bunker?"

"You're the hacker, figure it out."

_Damn right I'll figure it out_. She slammed the lid to her laptop and gathered the charger cord into her laptop bag before walking back into the bedroom, throwing together a few days worth of clothes into a small duffel bag. Her passport was shoved at the back of a formerly empty drawer that Blomkvist had commandeered in the two weeks he'd been living there. It was strange to see how the apartment had in a way filled out since he'd moved in.

Blomkvist saw the passport in her hand as she walked into the kitchen, grabbing the semi-warm pizza from the microwave.

"Where are you going?"

"Tallinn," she said between bites. "Pack a bag if you want to come along."

He looked up at her as she leaned against the counter, now wearing a plain hooded sweatshirt and jeans. She looked strangely ordinary.

"Why would I want to go to Tallinn?"

"You said it yourself. Shröder heads off one of the biggest crime organizations in Europe and he's based somewhere around Tallinn. I have phone records, emails, and text messages that can all be used to trace Camilla and this Shröder fuck. By the end of this you could write an encyclopedia on transnational crime."

"Is this going to be a repeat of Gosseberga, Lisbeth?" Ice-cold fear settled in his gut as he said it. Next to the hours spent in the hell of Martin Vanger's basement, the hours that he had searched for and eventually found Lisbeth within inches of death were the most terrifying moments of his life.

She waved him off, dumping her plate in the sink, "Not right now."

'Not right now' did not ease his concern in the least. 'Not right now' implied 'in the very near future,' and her vengeance would be a force to be reckoned with when the near future finally came. _Gosseberga indeed…_

"So," She looked at him with black eyes, "Tallinn?"

After a short trip to the Swedbank on Hornsgatan to retrieve his nearly expired passport, Blomkvist was back to sitting in the cramped passenger seat of Salander's Civic as she sped towards Bromma airport. Flights to Tallinn left every three hours, but they were in luck and caught the last two open seats on the noon puddle jumper. A brief squabble erupted on takeoff when Lisbeth was directed to turn off her laptop, so Blomkvist took it upon himself to unscrew the battery as the flight attendant argued with the irritated redhead.

She didn't speak to him for the rest of the flight.

At the airport, she rented a massive but rather beaten up arctic white Mercedes G that had a slight pull to the right. She forced Mikael to drive the beast as she reviewed the last five hours of phone history that had accumulated in the _CS-Mobile_ folder on her desktop.

He dared to glance over as a gust of wind pushed them around even more. Lisbeth was completely unphased. "Where are we going?"

"Just stay on Route 4, then go west on Route 11 to Keila."

He did, driving through the small villages and hamlets that dotted the road. Icy wind slipped through the weather stripping, and no amount of AC could make the cabin feel anywhere near hospitable. He wished she'd picked the damn corolla instead of the biggest machine in the lot, even though the old SUV was more inconspicuous than the brand new Toyota.

There was only one hotel in the village, at the junction of the Route 8 and 11 highways. The desk clerk was moderately proficient in Swedish and apologized in advance that the AC in the only room available had gone out two days previously when Blomkvist took the keys. Salander stood impatiently outside of the room, a nine-foot broadband cable in hand while her laptop bag, personal bag and surveillance gear were all slung over her shoulder. She hung a 'do not disturb' sign on the door handle as she dumped the surveillance equipment across the desk.

Blomkvist inspected the small room while Salander hooked up her laptop to the Internet. Next to Salander's king sized mattress, the double bed in the center of the room was horribly claustrophobic. There were no windows to be opened and the room was plastered with an awful dark green wallpaper.

"You want-" Her hand flew up to shush him as she yanked the headset out of the computer. A man's voice boomed over the small built in speakers. It had the same smooth rumble Zalachenko's.

'_Rüütel just moved into his camper. It's old and may not be up to code if you get what I'm saying.'_

'_If it's old and cramped enough, it could pose a carbon monoxide hazard.'_

'_I like how your pretty little PhD brain works. Don't take too long though. You still have a few associates to deal with back in Sweden. Call me and then come back out to Saue when you're done with Rüütel so we can celebrate.'_

The man's end of the call concluded with a beep, but thanks to the asphyxia impregnated on Camilla's phone, Salander could still very much hear everything that was going on in Camilla's surroundings. It sounded like she was driving somewhere as she could hear tires squealing and a solid thud. Whatever it was, she didn't stop for it.

"You missed the first half of the conversation. Rüütel is the chief of police in Tallinn with an amphetamine problem. He's going to flip on Shröder in two days because he won't keep him stocked on drugs and whores even after he spends every kroon he has on them already." She spat. He was just another asshole that hated women.

Blomkvist pulled up an ugly brown chair from next to the bed, parking it next to Lisbeth as she hammered away on her keyboard. She alternated between frowning and squinting at the screen as she worked, flicking through page after page of information that had just deposited itself into the Camilla folder.

She opened up another document, scrolling through it at a speed that only her photographic memory could handle, "Shröder's using a satellite phone."

"How do you know?" He pulled his glasses off of his shirt neck, peering at the size ten font. He still couldn't see anything, but he nodded as if he did when she pointed to a string of what looked like coordinates on the screen.

"He's in the middle of the ocean about fifty kilometers off the coast of Paldiski." She collapsed the call transcript before opening up a website with pictures of New England landscapes and forests.

She shoved a handful of bills into his hand as Lara Croft animation popped up on screen. "Go get the key to the minibar." She saw the strange look of something along the lines of rejection on his face, but did not respond. He got up and took the only key to the room with him before venturing out into the hallway.

Dakota, SixofOne, and their newest member Mendax were all online when she logged into the Hacker Republic.

**I have a job for you guys again.** Her standard black Old English typeface filled a new chat box.

**Wasp!** Was the simultaneous response from Dakota and SixofOne.

**We have a noob! **SoO typed.

**And he's supposedly an Aussie!** Dakota added on. **Our slightly illegal organization is finally growing up!**

**Do I have a say in any of this?** Mendax typed.

**No, you're an Aussie and a noob!** SoO typed.

**Now I know why we haven't had any Aussies before… **Lisbeth added on.

**How would you know if this is our first Aussie?** Dakota quipped back.

**Can we stop calling me an Aussie?** Mendax typed.

**Hackers! Refocus! Assignment? MUCHO IMPORTANTE!**

**Do we finally get to reverse the Swedish tax paying system?** Lisbeth couldn't believe SoO was still stuck that little scheme.

**The what? **Mendax replied.

**You know for an Aussie, he isn't very bright… **SoO continued to berate Mendax.

Salander was getting tired of their goofing around. **I'm logging off now…**

**WAIT!**

**Aussie, tell her to come back!**

**Hey Wasp.** Trinity had logged on. **What's the job and how much are you paying?**

Lisbeth smiled. At least Trinity was a no bullshit kind of guy. She wished he were a Swede instead of a snobby Brit. She wouldn't fuck him or anything, but Trinity was infinitely more useful and talented than Plague in all realms of computers.

**I need a bunch of hackers with too much time on their hands to get inside of the personal emails of the higher ups in the Estonian police.**

**Whoa, Wasp that's a bit much**. Trinity typed back.

**I'll do it**. Mendax typed.

**Yay for the Aussie! **SoO typed. **But why Estonia?**

**Business**. She responded.

**Awwwww…You won't even give us a hint?**

**Y or N?** She typed impatiently.

**What are we looking for at least?** Dakota piped in after a few lines of silence.

**Corruption of any sort.** She answered. **I'll figure out pay later.**

**You mean we get to benefit mankind? Pshh.**

**Fine. Consider yourself excluded from the fun. **Lisbeth typed.

**Fine.**

**Ignore SoO. I'm in, Mendax is in, Dakota, and probably Plague. Is that a decent group?** Trinity typed.

**Perfect**.

She shut the lid to her laptop as a key scratched against the lock.

"We can have the key, but the bar hasn't been stocked in years."

She ignored him, gathering the car keys out of an ashtray and a bag of surveillance gear she had borrowed from Milton but never got around to giving back. It contained over twenty thousand krona of camera equipment alone. "Get in the car; I'm driving this time."

In the car, she handed him a SLR Nikon camera that was rolled up in an old t-shirt, along with several a massive telephoto lens before starting the car. The wind had died down since the drive to Keila, but the potholes sent them bouncing around the cabin.

On the snowy embankments just south of the railroad crossing into Saue, Salander saw a freshly hit fox at the top of a snow mound. Its red fur stood out in stark contrast to its white and bleak surroundings. Maybe that was the sound she had heard on Camilla's phone.

Lisbeth continued driving through the small village. Most of the houses looked as if they were owned by the well to do as weekend getaways. All the streetlights were off and traffic signals flashed red, as if a blackout had recently rolled through. At the end of the main stretch, Lisbeth suddenly turned left down a poorly paved road, surrounded on both sides by aspen hedges.

A two story, bright yellow manor house could be seen as the trees opened up, but Salander would drive no further. It couldn't have been an accident that the house was built with five-kilometers of unobstructed view in all directions. Someone could easily watch the road if they got any closer. She wouldn't dare risk being spotted.

Four cars were parked in front. Lisbeth recognized the golden Saab from the day she'd barged into Tony Scala's apartment. Mentally, she berated herself for not being quicker in that particular moment; it all could have ended that day and saved her a six hundred krona plane ticket.

"Why are we-?"

Lisbeth yanked the camera she'd handed to him, screwing the telephoto lens on before snapping a dozen pictures of the compound and the license plates on the cars. She itched to get closer, but resisted. She still remembered how clever she felt in Gosseberga, only to be informed she'd triggered every fucking alarm in the woods surrounding Zala's compound after being clubbed over the head with her own pistol.

Blomkvist tapped her shoulder, "Side door, blonde woman heading for the motor pool."

Lisbeth looked up, spotting her. She looked eerily similar to her Irene Nesser alter ego. The similarity may come in handy in the future, she decided. They stayed only long enough for Lisbeth to snap off a few shots before heading back to the junction between the manor road and the main road.

"Now what?"

"We wait for the blonde woman to drive down the road and then we tail her." She shoved the camera back into his hands, "Climb into the backseat."

Lisbeth drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as they waited. She wished she'd brought the laptop with its little USB network stick with her. At least the Republic was backing her up on this. She didn't even want to think of how much valuable stakeout time she would have wasted if she tried cracking into the police database on her own.

A blue Chevy pickup truck rumbled down the manor road, the blonde woman driving. Blomkvist must have nodded off at some point and jumped when she started the SUV. Salander gave the woman a kilometer of space once they passed the railroad tracks just outside of the village.

The truck turned off Route 11 onto Route 17, heading back through Keila. Salander backed off further while Blomkvist shifted eagerly as she followed the truck into a residential area. She turned around the corner just as the truck pulled into a driveway at the end of the road.

She threw the Mercedes in reverse, circling the block. Blomkvist had the window rolled down and was at the ready on the right side of the cabin, shooting stills in rapid succession as they passed by.

"You get the address?"

"22 Saare. There was another car on the driveway."

Lisbeth brought them back to the hotel, mentally going through all that had transpired during the day. The only logical explanation she could find was that Camilla was a hit woman, cleaning up the connections Neidermann had made in Sweden. She had started with Svavelsjö. They were the big drug connection. Then there was a pimp in Uppsala – prostitution. The Yugoslavs were the gunrunners. It looked like Shröder had managed to dip his fingers in everything.

Camilla was Zala's favorite, if he even had one. If Lisbeth seriously picked through her financial records for school, payments were likely made by Karl Axel Bodin of Gosseberga. She wondered when Zala had pulled her into his gangster business, before or after Lisbeth had beaten her shitless on their seventeenth birthday?

They received awkward glances from the semi-Swede desk clerk as Blomkvist carried the oversized camera into the hotel with them. He wondered if he should make up a story to explain the absurdity of the situation. Lisbeth followed behind him on silent feet as he fumbled the room key with numb hands. Damn it, no one should have the power to be so silent.

He was beyond the point of surprise when she immediately hopped on her computer. He took it upon himself to leave her to it and drove into town to look for a half decent burger chain for a quick bite.

In the cyber world, Lisbeth logged back into the Hacker Republic. Twice in one day was almost unheard of for her. Twice in a week was much more common. The rest of the Republic didn't seem to complain when her status went online.

**WE DID IT!**

**That was four more exclamation points more than necessary**. Plague typed.

**The Aussie did it! I love our Aussie! Can we keep him/it/she/thing? **Lisbeth wondered if in real life, SoO was a twelve-year-old boy with severe ADHD. It would explain a lot.

**I really don't know why he's acting like this…** Dakota typed. It was through Dakota that SoO had managed to join the Republic, so it was Dakota who took the most offense in cases where SoO was acting more unruly than usual.

**Short story even shorter: these guys like to brag A LOT. It looks like a major amphetamine ring going on with the chief and one of the gang lords that the police has in protective custody.**

**Shit**. Lisbeth typed back.

**Yep. There's also a side of prostitution, but the amphetamine is the big kahuna.** Dakota added.

Lisbeth frowned at the screen.** I don't know what that is, but OK, something big.**

**I'll email you the Asphyxia connection and you can read to your heart's delight. Can I ask you a question?** Trinity typed.

**Shoot.**

**Are you a journalist?**

**NO**. She bit back.

Trinity was unfazed. **I would highly reconsider that, then. You could make millions on this story in any currency**.

***Snark.*** Plague typed. Only he knew the truth behind what Salander did with the truly dirty details.

Lisbeth looked at Blomkvist as he walked back in, carrying a bag from the Wendy's in the heart of Keila. **I don't make money with this stuff, but someone else makes a big difference.**

**AWWWWWW!**

**Shut up SoO!** Came four responses at once. Lisbeth closed the open Republic window before an all out cyber chat war broke out.

Blomkvist looked up from a Swedish language newspaper he'd picked up from the petrol station across the street. "Anything new?"

Salander said nothing, instead crossing the room and taking a seat on Blomkvist's lap, reaching into the Wendy's take out bag. _Double Baconator, score!_ She couldn't think of a better reward at the end of a productive day of spying.

"You know that's extremely distracting."

"Don't care." He responded by wrapping his arms around her waist. She quickly batted them away, "Eating. Give me ten more minutes to get naked."

"I want to be close to you. Not everything has to revolve around sex." His arms returned to their destination, "Did any of your hacker friends turn up anything on Shröder?"

She froze when he wrapped his arms around her waist again, placing his chin on her shoulder. . A good fuck wasn't hard to come by at all and was mind blowing when Blomkvist was involved. But closeness was a different and altogether dangerous territory with Blomkvist. It was closeness that had betrayed her into thinking that he might actually love her and it was closeness that convinced her to lower her guard enough to foolishly love him back. She could have sex with him and not have any problems with it.

She slipped off of his lap, retrieving her cigarettes from beside her laptop. It was a non smoking room, but she figured that if she flipped on the ancient fan in the bathroom and lit up there, the stench wouldn't be as obvious when they left.

"We'll take the second plane out of Tallinn back to Stockholm tomorrow. I'll copy you all the files and photos before I head back to Göteborg."

"What are we going to do about the police chief?" Blomkvist heard the strike of a match just inside the bathroom doorway. He lined himself up so that he could see her reflection in the mirror above the computer desk. She was leaning against the doorframe, staring right back at him with harsh eyes.

"Leave him."

"Lisbeth, we have information here that could save a life. We have to turn it in to the police."

"We have information that could the save the life of a corrupt cop that is also a john and a druggie," she snapped back at him, "Write a story about it if you're so concerned, but a dead man is still a dead man."

"I'll do just that, then."

"Fine. How fast could can you write it?"

"A week and a half if I push it and nothing gets hung up with Christer and Malin. It could be in circulation in three weeks if everything works out-"

"Too slow. You need something out in two weeks or less for it to be of any use." She flicked her cigarette butt into the toilet bowl before walking out.

On the desk she opened up the SD card slot in the camera, plugging it into the side of the laptop. They'd taken a combined total of forty-seven stills. Most of Blomkvist's shots were blurred, to which he shrugged sheepishly from over her shoulder as he watched her.

"If I had this hooked up to a printer you could work in a separate window while all the Asphyxia reports printed out, but you're just going to have to settle for me snatching the computer away occasionally."

Salander stood, yanking the chair out from under the desk before stripping for bed. Blomkvist looked at her in complete confusion; she had just handed over the reins to her most prized possession.

Lisbeth didn't know what to make of his new expression and only responded by throwing her shirt at him before flipping the light switch beside the bed, "Get typing."

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	9. Chapter 9

January 21th - February 1st

**Hey ya'll, back from my chill time in Greece and Italy! This chapter has taken me two months to write, so HOPEFULLY it isn't disjointed or confusing.**

Lisbeth snored quietly as he descended into a fifth hour of typing. It was well past four in the morning and they would be out to catch the eight am Stockholm plane in just a few hours, but he couldn't bring himself to break from the rhythm he had established. He could always sleep on the little puddle jumper, he supposed, though he knew that sleep and airplanes had never clicked for him.

For all of its modern luxuries and speed, using Lisbeth's laptop was a slow going process that involved him constantly having to work his way around the various passwords and layers of security she'd placed on even the most mundane of things. Most of the blocks could be disabled with a master password she'd authorized him to use, but not all. He still didn't have access to the copy of own hard drive, even if it sat right there on her cluttered desktop.

He figured that if he could keep up the pace, he just might make the necessary week deadline that would leave Christer enough time to organize the magazine and have it out for publication in two.

It would be close call and would no doubt piss off his editor in chief.

He'd shot off an email to her before he started typing the article, explaining the eccentric change of events to the February issue of _Millennium_, but he doubted Berger would greet the idea with welcome arms despite its enormous potential.

Since the publication that had cleared Lisbeth's name, Berger had become less and less receptive of taking on stories that could possibly put them in the sights of a very angry subject. Blomkvist suspected that deep down; there was a level of post-traumatic stress that hadn't yet resolved itself after the shooting at Gyros and events involving the Poison Pen. At times she would display a weariness of her environment that could only be matched Lisbeth. She also refused to walk anywhere unless there was someone else with her and preferred to take her car wherever she went up until an independent journalist's car had been bombed.

No, Berger most certainly would not want this article in _Millennium_.

After careful analysis of the situation, he shot off three more emails to Christer, Lotta, and Malin, asking for back up. For some reason Malin had been online at the time, vowing to support the article to the best of her ability in the brisk email she had sent back to him. He would likely have to wait until he got back to Fiskargatan to get a response from the others.

By five, Lisbeth was up, leaning over his shoulder as he went back to edit over the eleven pages he'd created. In the reflection of the screen, Blomkvist could see the slightest expression of surprise that flickered in Lisbeth's eyes. Even he had surprised himself with the volume of his work in such a short period of time.

She offered a few pointers and clarifications, but when he asked to be allowed access to his hard drive, she snorted before walking into the bathroom for another cigarette break. He looked at the screen, happy with his level of productivity as the shower began to run in the bathroom. He rewarded himself by stepping in with Lisbeth, staying there until the hot water abruptly shut off and sent them scrambling from under icy water.

A snowstorm in Stockholm delayed their flight for three hours. A rainsquall in Tallinn further put them off track for another two. It wasn't until nearly four in the afternoon that the plane touched down in Stockholm, exactly twenty-four hours after they had left.

When she pulled into the parking space under the apartment, she noticed a glint off the motorcycle that she hadn't been there when they'd left.

_The mirror!_

Her lips twitched ever slightly into a crooked grin as her hand roamed over the mirror stalk, tracing the faint line of welded metal. The fist-sized dent in the gas tank where it had fallen onto a traffic post was gone, too. Except for the telltale scratches and battle scars along the side of the gas tank, the Honda was restored to its former rugged glory.

Blomkvist chuckled behind her. "I thought you might like it."

"Yeah." She swung a leg over the seat, kicking the bike to start it. It sputtered to life pathetically before dying once more. A few more kicks and she gave up; the garage was just too damn cold for the engine to turn over. It looked like even with the forecasted break in the weather for the coming week the bike would have to stay in lock up.

Sighing inaudibly, she slung the bag of surveillance equipment over her shoulder before hiking up the four flights of stairs to her penthouse apartment. Blomkvist puttered along a flight and a half behind her in his usual way when she unlocked the door to the frigid apartment.

Sliding her laptop bag across the kitchen counter, she looked at the variety of flashing electronics in the kitchen. _Another power outage_, she thought, rubbing her hands together for warmth as she checked the kitchen pipes. Frozen. Again. One day she was going to have a serious talk with the landlord over who did the shit wiring in the building.

The thermostat in the utility room refused to cooperate, and the security system would have to be reset again. Something thumped and yowled in the open washing machine as she searched for a blowtorch, the now familiar brown hairball trying its best to trip her as she moved around the apartment.

In the living room, Blomkvist fed rolls of newspaper into the built in fireplace, the iPod Lisbeth had gifted him playing Elvis quietly on the floor beside him. During the night he managed to fill it with whatever music he found on Lisbeth's machine while she slept and couldn't protest. Most of it was crap to his ears, yet there, buried in the deep recesses of her computer, was the King of Rock n Roll. He almost laughed out loud when he found it.

A laptop floated in the air in front of him as Lisbeth entered the room as silently as the cat following her. "Are you going through laptop withdrawals yet?"

He caught the soft jab he was entitled to with his hand as she walked by, plopping down on the opposite side of the sofa, the cat jumping up and lodging itself between the back of the couch and her leg. Even completely sprawled out on the black leather, Lisbeth just managed to touch the side of his leg with the tips of her toes.

The log in screen flashed in front of his eyes when he booted the laptop up, but was gone before he could pass the computer over to Lisbeth. He watched in amazement as the cursor opened file after file while its guide sat on the opposite end of the couch from him.

"How did you do that?"

"I synced the computer to my phone," a green highlighter passed over a timeline of events he had included, "I can watch every single keystroke you make _and_ make my own."

"Smart," he confessed as opened her iTunes, "When do you start working for Steve Jobs?"

"Never. Other Steve is the brains of Apple."

He skimmed through his earlier work, making his own annotations on what to come back to. "Other Steve?"

She looked at him as if he had sprouted another head. "Steve Wozniak. Stop playing shitty music."

"I'm only playing what's _you've_ already added to _your_ collection, although I admit I don't see you as an Elvis Presley type."

She shrugged, opening up a window to the HR site on her phone as she watched Mikael hunt and peck his way to a complete sentence. She restrained herself from snatching the computer away from him. "You type really slow."

Blomkvist ignored her comment, clicking his way through the rest of her abysmal music library. He visibly flinched when something very metallic sounding blasted out of the speakers, the cat yowling along. "Were the Evil Fingers big on throwing pots and pans against rocks while yodeling by any chance?" he asked mildly, turning the aggravating noise off.

"I think they just banged pots and pans together and yodeled without the rocks. How about you talk to the cat while I type?"

Blomkvist looked somewhat relieved by the idea. "You know the story better than I do, so be my guest."

"You can still dictate," she clarified when he passed the laptop over the cat's head, "You know more about Shröder than I do." _At the moment at least_, she thought smugly. She'd sic'd Plague and Dakota on that particular project, though they still had yet to report back.

He rubbed the back of his neck, watching her become totally engrossed in her work, "I know a little bit," he admitted, "I think you're as always a few paces ahead of the game from me."

Her eyes flashed briefly over the lid of the computer, "You're not _Kalle Blomkvist_ for nothing. Don't be so fucking modest because you know more than I do; just enjoy the moment," she said, flashing him a brief, crooked non-smile. "Now go to bed and don't argue. You look like shit."

Blomkvist nodded, thankful for the reprieve from work. Lisbeth waited for the telltale creak of the bedroom door before getting up and running the coffee machine.

Walking back into the living room, she nearly launched her coffee mug at the laptop when Plague's ugly mug popped across her screen. 'Where have _you_ been for the last two days?'

'Hello? Did you like the little surprise I left you?'

Salander paused her work, glaring at the screen. "What surprise?"

'I turned your power off. That code you were so annoyed with a couple weeks ago can actually be used to overload most electronics and shut them off. You have a nice apartment by the way.'

"Enjoy the pictures because you'll never make it up the four flights of stairs to get here," she bit back, "Did you dig up anything on Shröder?"

'Depends; can I look at something other than a Seven Eleven napkin?'

'Yeah. Shröder is AKA Ranta. Jarrod is Atho, Horst is Harry, but Shröder is their primary alias. I emailed you all their dirty shit. Over and out.'

The video screen collapsed on itself, leaving Lisbeth with the various files Mikael had left open on her desktop. The email attachment Plague was a goldmine of information, right down to a near manual on transnational amphetamine smuggling tricks. She downloaded all fourteen gigabytes of emails, transaction records, and Internet histories into a folder aptly named 'TO: KALLE" before rinsing out her mug in the sink and crawling into bed beside Blomkvist.

Blomkvist was not surprised to find both Lisbeth and the bike missing the following morning. It was set to be a warm opening week for February, the conditions as ideal as they could possibly get for that time of year. At some point in the very early morning he thought he could recall the coffee machine running and the jingle of her keys in the lock, but by the time he padded into the kitchen the scent of coffee was just a faded memory.

The cat followed at an acceptable distance when he walked into the living room, coffee in hand. It watched him from the archway leading to the hall, and he knew that without Lisbeth in the same room, it would never come near him. He was completely fine with the arrangement.

He tapped the touchpad of the laptop, waking the sleeping machine. Lisbeth had left it unlocked for him, with a blue folder sitting squarely in the center of the desktop with the tag of "TO KALLE."

Simultaneously, his mobile began to dance across the coffee table, the caller ID displaying the picture had had snapped two weeks ago of Lisbeth asleep across her laptop in the dining room.

"Kalle."

"Hey, up?"

"Not really. I found the present you left me on the your desktop but I haven't unwrapped it yet." His attempt at humor was met with silence.

"Just listen: Per-Åke Sandström would be a good start for any confrontations you want to do."

Blomkvist turned the cell over to speakerphone, setting the phone down on the coffee table by his feet as he rubbed a hand across his face._When would the connections end?_ "The journalist Dag exposed?"

"He ran amphetamines and steroids in his car for Shröder four years ago, but he knows Shröder only as Atho Ranta."

His brow furrowed, as he opened up a simple search for what he could about the sleazy journalist. "Why the alias?"

"Don't know. I have eight years of shit on Shröder's hard drive to look through, every fucking call and text Camilla makes or receives, and no fucking computer to use at all!"

The call ended abruptly after that.

"Bye to you, too," He sighed to himself, staring at the computer screen. Lisbeth was eventually bound to get irritated with him for using her laptop sooner or later. With a final, heaving sigh, he continued on with his own search for Sandström.

In the aftermath of the publishing of Dag's book, Sandström had swiftly been arrested and sentenced to eight months for multiple counts of soliciting prostitution. He was out in six and a half for good behavior, but assigned to a parole agent for a period of one year. His current residence was listed as a small apartment in central Solna. Blomkvist scribbled down the address on a post it note before locking up the apartment.

The moment the door to Sandström's apartment creaked open Blomkvist knew the former advertising agent would be an easy egg to crack. When he announced his intentions, the man didn't bother to fight him. On the contrary, he removed the chain from the door and hung his head as he waved Blomkvist into the cramped apartment.

"I thought you were the parole officer when you rung."

"Yet I'm not and still you let me in."

"My life has been ruined enough as it is. What more could _Millennium_ do to me?"

"We could go on in length and detail of your past abuse of women and the consequences that naturally followed, but that's not why I'm here. I want to know what you know about the Ranta Brothers."

"I don't kn-"

"Don't start that now I can offer you anonymity for this even though you and I both know don't deserve a single ounce of it. There's only one other person you've ever told about the Ranta's." Pure terror flashed behind Sandström's spectacles as his lip trembled for the slightest of moments. Blomkvist nodded at his involuntary reaction. "Good. You still remember who I'm talking about."

Sandström nodded and asked him if he wanted any coffee. Blomkvist refused pointedly before digging out a pen and pocket sized pad of paper.

"You swear I won't be named? If I have go back to-" Blomkvist held up a hand as Sandström shuddered.

"If you stall or evade my questions I'll rethink my proposition of clemency. How did you first meet the Rantas?"

"I met the younger one, Harry in a bar back in the eighties."

"In Tallinn or Stockholm?"

"Tallinn."

"Go on."

"He was twenty or something along those lines and walked up to me and said I looked like I needed a good whore to fuck. I passed him on it then."

Sandström paused for a moment, leading Blomkvist to look up from his scribbling with an expression of boredom mixed with revulsion. He turned his eyes back to his notes, waving Sandström on.

"Every now and again I would see him and he would always offer the same thing. I turned him down for years until finally I accepted."

"Ines H?"

"Yes."

Blomkvist finished jotting down a couple more details before looking up. "Who is Atho Ranta?"

Sandström shook slightly with the name. "I can't."

"Yes you can and you will. Who is Atho Ranta? What does he do?"

"Everything," Sandström responded, "Drugs, guns, women. He's Harry's older brother, but that look nothing alike. His hair's black and he has black eyes and he's built like a miniature tank. I've only seen him three times but that was enough. You can't erase a man like that from your memory."

"What happened in the three encounters you had with Atho?"

"The first time, God, we were drunk and he offered me Ines because she needed to learn."

"Learn what?"

"To cooperate. She would fight Atho's clients and he said it wasn't good for business. He took me to her place and then left. That's how the first two time I saw him went."

"How did you start running drugs for him?"

"That only started the second time I saw him. He offered me access to Ines whenever I wanted if I would take a carload of steroids across on the ferry between Tallinn and Stockholm. It worked fine for a year. But..."

"But what?"

"Atho got a carload of meth from I don't know where. The steroids market had dried up and meth had come in as the big thing to buy. I didn't want to do it at all but Atho wouldn't hear it. He took me to a warehouse and tied me to a chair. Then I met Ronald Niedermann. He snapped a man's neck right before my eyes and Atho just watched. I had no choice or I was going to have my neck snapped too."

"Where did the dealings take place?"

"A warehouse in a little hamlet an half an hour south of Tallinn."

"What was Niedermann's role?"

"I don't know. I only saw him twice. He might have been Atho's bodyguard or something like that but I really don't know. He was always following Atho around."

"Did you know any women involved in Atho's business?" Sandström shook his head ardently.

"Don't quit on me now, Per Åke. You're doing too good to slip up. I can fuck your life up even more than it already is if you don't cooperate."

"I…" Blomkvist glared up at him as he continued to stall. Sandström looked at him with conflicted eyes, his mouth hanging open slightly as he tried to formulate his words. "There was one…and she scared me as much as Niedermann. She was the one who made the drugs, but it wasn't just drugs that she made. She was fucking insane."

"How so?"

"Atho had a lot of women who became problems for him later on. Some got pregnant, contracted HIV, or tried running away. If he couldn't fix the problem when it cropped up, he'd give them over to the woman. After that they would just disappear."

"She killed them?"

Sandström nodded pathetically, "Gases, chemicals with so many warning stickers on them you wonder how they managed to exist in their containers. She cleaned up any problem there was and wouldn't leave a trace is what Harry told me once. That's what scared me the most about her."

"One last question Per Åke, and I thank you for the information you've volunteered," Mikael shifted to retrieve his phone from his pocket, flipping through his pictures, "Is this the woman?"

Sandström looked as if he had had a coronary. Blomkvist thanked him for his time before showing himself to the door.

When he arrived back at Fiskargatan forty minutes later, he sent a quick recap of the interview to Lisbeth. Her response fifteen minutes later was that she could have told him half the information herself. Blomkvist did not press on the exact methods she used to find her own information, but was assured by of Sandström's bizarre behavior that they weren't in the least bit legal. Salander simply responded that her methods worked well and he should possibly look into using them, an idea to which he politely declined.

Instead, he opened up the file Lisbeth had left on the desktop and began sifting through, one document and email at a time.

A week into her final stint in Göteborg, Lisbeth found herself having more trouble finding sleep that usual. She had worked almost around the clock during her free time digging into every crevice she could find for information leading to Shröder and Camilla while getting by on two hours of sleep a night. Now the magazine was set to print and she thought she would have a slight mental reprieve from not having to dig so hard, but her mind had yet to catch up with that particular notion.

In her insomnia-induced boredom, she opened up the _Millennium_ file and picked out the Shröder article. She read through its forty-four pages in a matter of ten minutes, still finding the odd kink here and there to iron out. Minutes quickly turned to hours, the time only registering in her mind when bold typeface appeared at the bottom of the third to last page.

**Still online, Lisbeth?**

_Looks like it._ She looked at the time on her phone and frowned Two-thirty in the morning. Three-thirty in Stockholm. _What's your excuse?_

**Pre-release jitters I suppose. Your late night rewrites aren't helping much.**

_I'm editing it. You could do a better job cementing the Zalachenko-Shröder-Camilla connection. The last eight pages were weak. I already fixed all of it. You're welcome._

**Any compliments to go with that tall order?** He typed.

_The other thirty-six pages are solid. Don't try to confront Shröder again. Printing today?_

**Yes so no more 'editing' my article. The issue should be on shelves the day before you get back. Christer's outdone himself with the title graphics this time.**

_Boring_.

**Attention getting. You're welcome.** Blomkvist's cursor closed the article copy, leaving her desktop oddly empty of activity as she smirked at his parting remark. Had anyone else tried to throw her words back in her face as Blomkvist had, Lisbeth would have smashed her foot in squarely in their own face. Or sent an email attachment of questionable origins. Probably both.

_One more day,_ she thought. Then she was done with Göteborg. She would make sure to drop in on Dr. Jonasson before she took her indefinite leave of the city. All she had left was a marksmanship test in the coming afternoon. After that she was free to leave.

She thought whether or not she should just skip it altogether. It was a test primarily for those wanting to specialize in personal protection, so she really had no interest in it at all. Surveillance and PI's were more her thing while Personal Protection was really just protecting shitheads from other shitheads. In any case, she already had one not-such-a-shithead journalist that she had to keep from being dragged away to some fuckjob's torture chamber.

That thought brought her back to his attempted confrontation with Shröder. In her opinion, he'd laid all his cards out too soon. It was like trying to confront someone like Niedermann, which he'd also probably try. Fucking idiot. She should have been there to tell him no, that there were some people who you just don't reveal your cards to. More than a few journalists had gotten themselves killed for less shit than that.

She thought about the bomb that had been shoved up the exhaust of a journalist's car while she'd been Gibraltar. For the smallest of moments she thought of Blomkvist and how his pigheaded quest for good often got him in similar dire straights. Someone had to be around to tell him no. It was that train of thought that led to a final resolve to stay in Göteborg for the marksmanship exam.

She smiled to herself as her mind finally stopped resisting sleep. Lisbeth Salander was getting a gun.

The following morning, Lisbeth awoke to the sound of her phone vibrating across the end table. A hand shot out from under her pillow, grabbing the damn thing before it managed to vibrate itself onto the floor. She unlocked it and checked the time. Five twenty in the morning. Just fucking great.

Not bothering to stifle a yawn, she turned on the phone's Internet connection (she'd learnt quickly that leaving it on would drain the phone in a matter of hours) and checked what had set it off at this ungodly hour. She expected it to be either Blomkvist or Plague. What she got instead made sent her scrambling for her clothes and duffel bag.

Camilla had booked a flight to Stockholm leaving from Tallinn in forty minutes. Lisbeth cursed herself for taking the bike over the train. The flight between Tallinn and Stockholm was three hours while it was a four and a half hour ride to Stockholm if she hauled ass. She dialed Blomkvist twice as she whirled around the room packing, but was directed to voicemail each time. All of her texts bounced back. Fuck.

She bungeed down her duffel bag and took off up the E4, hitting 140 just past Jonköping. By Norkköping she was beating the plane by four minutes but a detour just outside of Södertälje set her back by thirty minutes. All and all, the trip was just over four hours by the time she dropped her kickstand and shouldered her duffel bag on the curb just outside the _Millennium_ building.

Her hands were still numb from the vibrations of the bike when she punched in the security code at the top of the stairs. The TV was on full blast when she walked in, all six pairs of eyes glued to the screen. She supposed it was some sort of morning ritual for the magazine. Mikael was up in the loft, leaning against the railing with Christer beside him. He smiled when he spotted her and disappeared from her field of vision for the briefest of moments, reappearing on the stairs with the latest Millennium issue held triumphantly in his hands.

She had to admit; the cover did look pretty damn good.

She let him hug her when he approached, but didn't miss the sideways glance Berger shot her when she thought she wasn't looking. She decided to wrap her arms around Blomkvist just for the added 'piss off the bitch' bonus.

"You came back earlier than I expected."

"So did someone else."

Blomkvist looked at her with a comical expression that was quickly replaced with a sobering one. "Camilla."

Lisbeth nodded. "I don't think it's just a coincidence, either."

"Oh?"

"I would need my computer to be sure, but I think Shröder couldn't keep his mouth shut about you calling him and passed on the message to Camilla."

"And here I thought you came early back because you missed me." Berger looked up at that, too.

Lisbeth glared at him. "This isn't a fucking game, Mikael."

"I never suggested it was. What do you propose I do?"

She opened her mouth, but was cut off by the rattling of the mail slot. Both looked up in time to something small and metal bounce across the floor. Lisbeth's eyes widened when she recognized what it was, her instincts taking over as she shoved Mikael and Malin behind a desk and launched her duffel bag at the object. She dived behind the sofa just as the explosion roared through the office building.

**Follow me on tumblr for daily updates and tidbits on Women Who Hate Men. **

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**Personal thanks to Jpena for starting her own Millennium fanfic and really motivating me to get this story up and moving again!**


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10 Women Who Hate Men

**I feel so horrible for taking a month to update, but chapter 10 is here! Anyone check out the cover picture? Just a random redhead I found on the internet, but the smirk looked so much like what I thought Camilla's would look like that I couldn't resist.**

Directly across from the _Millennium_ office, Camilla and Horst sat in a small breakfast café. They'd gotten into Stockholm-Bromma slightly earlier than expected and had hailed a cab to from there to Götgatan, where they had been watching everyone going in and out of the number nineteen building for the last forty-five minutes.

Once again, a change was in order and now Camilla sported a head of long brown hair and spoke openly in Russian to Horst beside her about how to carry out her latest set of plans.

"I'm telling you, it's too crowded to throw that thing in there today."

"So the windows might blow out…the whole building isn't going to come crashing down on the street."

"I don't care about that," Horst dropped his voice as a waiter walked behind them, "Someone might recognize you."

"And what are they going to do if they do? We'll be clear of here by the time someone figures it out."

Horst buried his face in his hands as Camilla continued watching the magazine offices from the café across the street. At times she was just too damn headstrong for her own good. Horst did not want to go back to prison, even though he'd heard the Swedish prison system was a joke in comparison to the still very Soviet-esque Estonia.

His hand nudged her bag, tapping the metal container within. "When do you have the time to make all this shit?"

"When I'm alone and not being bothered by you or Jarrod."

"Exactly. There's no time. It's always, 'Oh Cam, here's a list of people late on dues,' or 'Can you take care of a few problems for me?' Fucking slave driver."

"Let's not forget his little hissy fit when he wanted me to get rid of Rüütel, who happened to be the only reason the cops haven't put the house under siege. What a fucking idiot."

Horst nodded. "I miss Ronald. He knew how to negotiate, none of this 'kill, kill, kill' shit." He looked down at her newer, plain-Jane phone she'd bought at a kiosk in the airport. "How'd you figure out your phone was bugged?"

"That idiot that bumped me on the metro a couple weeks ago left a micro card in my phone."

"And you're sure it's Lisbeth behind all of it?"

"It has to be. Who else would want to track me, but not turn me into the cops? She's a fucking tech genius if you remember what Pappa used to say. If she saw the phone switch countries, she'll be here any time now."

"So you think she'll come here and tell everyone that you're back."

"That's exactly what I think she'll do, so we'll wait for her."

Her theory was proven true when less than three minutes later a motorcycle's engine revved along the street, its rider honking their horn impatiently at all the foot traffic flooding through the street. Camilla watched her sister with interest as she stood the bike up on the curb, strapping her helmet to the side rail of her bike. It's a Honda, she thinks. Her hair was back to the shade of red she hadn't seen since they were kids.

"So that's the runt of the litter."

Camilla drained her coffee, setting it down on the table with a solid clunk. "In a way."

"I could crush her like a bug."

"You'd have to get your hands on her first," a finger drifted up to the small indent under her eye where Lisbeth managed to break her orbital socket ten years ago. "She'll smash your face in before you could even start blocking."

They watched as Lisbeth typed in the security code before jogging up the stairs and out of sight. After a minute, they stood, Camilla shouldering a leather bag as Horst swung a jacket around his shoulders. They agreed that he would duck into the tourist t-shirt shop across the street while she ran up to deliver _Millennium's_ surprise.

At the top of the stairwell, she lifted the mail slot to peer in for a brief second before tossing the grenade across the room. She made it out of the building just as the windows about blew out and glass rained down across Götgatan.

First, there was a flash. For a split second, she thought it was only a flash bang. Then sofa she'd taken refuge behind seemed to fly backwards ten feet, dragging her with it. Finally came the sound that left her ears ringing so terribly that no other sound could come through. Bits of glass from the ceiling lights rained down as she laid half pinned between a decommissioned radiator and the sofa.

Then she smelt the acrid fumes of a thousand matches burning. Phosphorus.

Thrusting both legs up, she pushed the sofa away from her, jumping up to survey the damage. There was fire _everywhere_.

"Mikael?" Why was she yelling? They were all probably deaf!

A figure seemed to clamber to their feet as the room filled with smoke, dragging with them another body. Lisbeth saw their shoes. Mikael and Malin. Check.

She knew Christer was in the loft with Karim and raced up the stairs to find them both groping around through the thick smoke. She grabbed them both and got them down the stairs, leading them around the pockets of fire that would instantly flare up and die down in a span of seconds. Christer and Karim. Check.

Berger stood in the hall outside the door, her arms crossed and her face vacant as Lisbeth shoved Christer and Karim out the door.

Lisbeth grabbed the stupid woman roughly by the shoulder, snarling words she could no longer hear, "Get the fuck out of here and don't touch anything!"

Berger yelled something back, but all Lisbeth could make out was _Mikael _and _back_ _inside_. Those words were the only incentive she needed to dive back into _Millennium_ as the smoke began to funnel into the halls. Berger was out and could save her own ass, she reasoned as she dropped to a crouch, looking for anything remotely human looking.

What she found was blood. Followed by a pair a tennis shoes lying on the ground, one knee elevated. Blomkvist? No, she was sure he was wearing dress shoes when she walked in.

_Cortez_, she realized, seeing the brown hooded sweater he had been wearing earlier.

A hand grabbed her shoulder as she crept towards the body. She looked up to find Blomkvist beginning to mouth something along the lines of_flying_ _desk_ _leg_ before his face contorted to something akin to worry as his hand suddenly flew to her ear, coming away covered in blood. She couldn't feel a thing.

Metal hissed and popped, shooting small particles of phosphorus around the room as Lisbeth assessed how to get the unconscious Cortez out. A piece of hollowed out aluminum protruded from Cortez's thigh, going all the way through and out the back, the wheel of the rollaway still attached at the end. There was no painless way to do the job, she realized. The best thing they could do for him would be to drag him out and possibly tie something around his leg as a tourniquet while they waited for an ambulance outside.

The floor shook as the loft started to crash down around them. "Grab his arms and let's go!"

Mikael didn't need to be told twice, heaving Cortez's torso into his arms as Lisbeth placed his legs over her shoulders. Mikael backed up through the entrance hall as more and more of the building was being ripped apart by the chemical blaze.

Halfway down the stairs, Mikael's grip on Cortez began to slip. He kept trudging on, but Salander could see the pain rapidly crossing his face. When they finally laid Cortez down on the sidewalk, he seemed to crumple against the wall, clutching his arm.

Lisbeth was by his side the second she saw him drop. When she reached out to touch him lightly on the arm, but he waved her off with hand;_no_, trying to hide whatever was affecting his arm.

She had to pry his hand from his arm, and she was quite positive what she saw she would never be able to _un-see_. "Shit, Mikael."

She knew the basics to most injuries. If there was blood, bandage it or put a tourniquet on it if there was enough of it. Splints went on broken bones. But burns, especially the chemical ones that had created small but deep pockets across his arm, were complete foreign territory. Was she supposed to cover them? Could she run water of them? His wounds seemed to smoke as if they were still burning; the look on his face confirmed her guess.

She remembered she still had a bottle of water in one of the Honda's side cases and hoped it hadn't frozen.

She looked around for the most sane and least injured casualty. Her eyes settled on Malin as she finished tying a shoelace around Cortez's leg. Smart.

"Malin!" she shouted. She whipped around, barely in time to catch Lisbeth's wallet as she ordered her to buy as much water as possible. Lisbeth dripped what was left of her own water on the deep burns that had opened up in small clusters all across his forearm. The rolled sleeves of his shirt were blackened and singed, but the skin beneath remained unblemished.

"Where else, Mikael?" she asked in what she assumed was a soft voice, "Point for me." Where was Malin with the water she'd asked for?

Faced with the fact that the EMT's might beat Malin back, she looked for other resources. Her eyes settled on the spongy liner that was beginning to fall out of her helmet. It was time to get a new one anyways. Her fingers made quick work to pull it out, dousing the liner with water just as the howl of sirens started to bounce off the buildings. The cool compresses seemed to do there job as Mikael contorted face slowly slackened. It was enough for her to make up her mind. Camilla was going to die and Shröder was going down with her.

Two hours later, Lisbeth paced the distance from the ICU's emergency exit to the nurse's station. It was exactly twenty-three paces; thirty-one if she circled around to the coffee kiosk. Somehow a nurse in the ER managed to keep her still enough to clean and bandage her ear before she managed to escape up to the third floor where the majority of _Millennium_ had been taken. Berger and Malm shared room 321C while Blomkvist was shoved down at the end of the corridor in room 302C.

From the hall, she could see Malm had two bandages over his eyes; the temporary flash blindness would right itself in a day or so from what she gathered from nurses. His partner Arnold sat in a chair beside him, watching Lisbeth with something between gratefulness and suspicion as he held Christer's hand.

Berger was a complete emotional train wreck, but would likely be released by the end of the day after a quick psych evaluation. She teetered on the edge of the hospital bed, her face contorted in rage as she argued with the charge nurse. Lisbeth smirked; that was one way to _not_ leave the hospital. The nurse looked up and saw Salander standing in the hall, flicking the blinds closed.

Lisbeth walked the halls seven more times and counted how many cigarettes she had left twice before Annika and the floor doctor emerged from room 302C. Annika waved a hand for Lisbeth to come over. She couldn't cover the distance fast enough.

"He's in pain, but he's been begging to see you." Without any forewarning, Annika threw her arms around Lisbeth; lifting her off the floor in a crushing embrace. "Thank you!"

She gently nudged the door shut behind her with a boot. His eyes snapped open at the miniscule sound, watching her as she walked around the bed and sat on the edge of the nightstand. The entirety of his right arm was wrapped tightly in gauze, lying limply by his side. The bandages hidden under his hospital gown creaked with every inhalation. Every pained sound he made was a kick in the gut for Salander.

"Hey," he said weakly. "How are the others?"

_Fucking Blomkvist_, she thought, _always others before himself_.

"Karim and Malin have already gone home. Cortez is in a different wing."

"Christer? Erika? What about them?"

"Two doors down. Berger is getting a psych eval."

"I think we'll all need one of those after this," he groaned, "Fuck, Lisbeth. Just kill me now."

A hesitant knock came from the door as a nurse came in to restock. Lisbeth continued to silently seethe on the end table as the woman went about her business.

"I'll fucking kill her," she said when the nurse left, "I'll hunt her down and kill her with my bare fucking hands when I find her."

Blomkvist pushed out a long, labored breath, looking at her with drooping eyes. "Does it bother you at all that you would willingly kill your own sister?"

"No. It's necessary."

Before that day, she hadn't exactly delighted in the idea, nor had she been repulsed by it. But now there was no question in her mind that Camilla had to go.

"Killing should never be necessary." His voice was resigned, but he moved his hand over hers. His thumb twitched in a way that could be interpreted as a gentle squeeze of the hand if the rest of his fingers could work.

She pushed it away, irritated by his sudden, naive do-gooder attitude. One day it was going to get him killed. Like it almost did today.

"Get it through your thick fucking skull _Kalle Blomkvist_: she wants me and would kill you without batting an eye if she could. So deal with it unless you have seven more lives to spare."

She hopped down from the end table, shoving her hands in her pockets as she stormed out into the hallway. Making an immediate left towards the waiting area, she nearly trampled Annika's sleeping form beside the doorway to Mikael's room. The sight instantly made her feel like an utter ass. _Way to go Salander, kick a man when he's down_. She knew she should probably apologize, but she couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't make matters worse. At a loss for what to do in the matter, she ventured back to the coffee dispenser for a fifth cup.

She saw Sonya Modig's reflection behind her in the laminated plastic of the machine. "Fröken Salander, a word?"

"No." She grabbed her coffee and stood to leave the empty waiting room. Modig was the smallest pain in the ass from Bublanski's horde, but that didn't mean Lisbeth would break Rule 1 just for Modig.

"You weren't credited as a co-writer in _Millennium's_ new issue," Modig called out, "I'd be pretty pissed if I didn't get any recognition for my work."

_That_ made Lisbeth stop in her tracks, her eyes narrowing. No one should have known _that_, not even the staff at the magazine itself. Plus, the magazine wasn't going to be released to the public for another day. She cursed Modig for peaking her interest, but took a seat on the opposite side of the seating arrangement, ready to spring up and away at a moments notice.

"There's been a formal complaint against you in particular for the article on the Shröder brothers." Salander did not respond.

Modig sighed, "I'm supposed to say that it would behoove you to consider protective custody, but I've already figured I'd be wasting my breath." Salander continued to eye her over the coffee cup until Modig gave up and stood.

"Do your superiors know where I live?" She finally asked.

Modig paused midstride when she heard Salander's voice, "No," she confessed. No one knew a damn thing at all regarding what Salander might have been up to in the months passed since the end of her trial, Modig thought as she turned to face the bizarre woman behind her.

Lisbeth turned in the chair to face Modig, giving her a tight-lipped non-smile that revealed nothing yet spoke so much.

The policewoman gave Salander one final looked over before walking into Berger's room, pulling the blinds shut behind her. Lisbeth couldn't help but crack a true smirk at the persistence of the female cop. Would any of them ever learn?

Finishing off the coffee, she tossed it in the trash and slipped past Annika as she slumped over in the chair outside Mikael's room. The room was dark and Mikael did not stir when she shut the door behind her and took up residence on the couch beneath a window overlooking the Arstaviken. For the longest of times she just sat there in the dark, listening to all the beeps of the cardiac monitor and glaring at the nurses who seemed to walk in every twenty minutes. She knew she wasn't allowed in the ICU rooms after nine, but none of the nurses had the courage to tell her to get out yet, so she stayed.

Lisbeth didn't realize she'd nodded off until she felt someone shaking her shoulder. She opened her eyes to come face to face with a pair of eyes so similar to Blomkvist that for a second she completely forgot that he was out cold from painkillers on the hospital bed beside her. Then reality came back to her and she realized that the Blomkvist imposter was Annika.

"Hmm?" She looked around for the nearest clock in the room. The time on the EKG monitor read nine thirty Shit. She didn't mean to conk out for _that_ long.

"I asked if you've been in here all night."

She sat up, wincing at a stiff neck, "Mostly."

"Go home and change then, for God sakes! You smell like a box of matches! I'll keep him from walking off while you're gone."

"Can I borrow your car? I jumped in the ambulance to get here."

Annika dug her keys from her pocket, "It's the-"

"Forest green Volvo S80 with the moon roof and metro parking exemption sticker on the left rear bumper," she said, slinging her motorcycle jacket over her shoulder, grabbing the keys from Annika as they both walked out of the room, "Got it."

She passed Berger as she headed out into the guest parking lot, twirling Annika's keys on her index finger.

Mikael waited for the door to click shut behind Annika to open his eyes fully. He was aware that Lisbeth had slipped in to keep watch after he'd passed out, though it was a gesture he hadn't quite believed when he saw it. Truthfully he thought she'd already skulked home to plot how best to make Camilla feel equal agony. He had no doubt that she had been to some extent, but the fact that she came back was humbling. At least she wasn't _that_ irritated with him.

He jumped slightly when the door clicked open again. Expecting the morning charge nurse, he was surprised to find Berger wearing a solemn mask and clutching folded piece of paper. She took a seat silently beside the hospital bed, thrusting the paper into his hand, her eyes now glassy.

"What is this?" He asked, squinting as he tried to discern the typing on the paper without his glasses. He looked up in disbelief at the first five words.

"You're resigning?"

"Yes." She bowed her head low, "Effective immediately."

"I can't accept this, Erika."

"Yes you can and you will, Mikael. I can't stay with the magazine knowing that what happened yesterday could repeat itself. I don't want to spend my life with a target on my back because you've pushed the wrong buttons on the wrong person. It's too much!"

"You picked a damn good time to do it, then."

"I agree. I should have just gone somewhere else after SMP."

"Erika, don't say that," he pleaded, "You were being stalked by a luna-"

"And what's going on right now, Mikael? We are being hunted by a lunatic that happens to be a exact copy of Lisbeth Salander!"

"Stop _right_ _there_." His voice took on a dangerous edge, "I understand you both don't hold each other in the highest esteem, but goddamn it she has done more for both of us and _Millennium_ than you could possibly imagine."

Berger held his gaze with an icy glare that he fully returned. "In that case, I have nothing left to say."

"I think I prefer it that way."

"Goodbye Mikael."

He waited for the door to click shut before crumpling the paper and throwing it at the opposite wall.

Four hours later, Lisbeth stepped out of the elevator onto the third floor. On her shoulder she carried her laptop bag and a second change of clothes. She'd be damned if Mikael was left alone without either herself or Annika watching while Camilla was back. Tucked into the side pocket were no less than seven different newspapers, all with the same headline.

Annika was sitting in the seating arrangement in front of the nurse's station reading a thick novel from her ridiculously oversized bag. She looked up as Lisbeth handed her back her keys. "Hey. Take a nap at home?"

Lisbeth flopped down in the seat across from Annika, flipping her laptop open, "My bike was towed so I had to claim it from the impound lot. Thanks for letting me borrow your car."

"You're welcome. They took him in to get skin grafts on his arm and shoulder," she let out a world-weary sigh, "I hate it when things get like this."

Lisbeth looked up from her laptop at her lawyer and part-time friend. "He's a journalist. They get into loads of shit."

"He has a better shit finding radar than most," Annika snorted, shaking her head, "Forgive me for that. But sometimes he just makes me so mad."

"The annoyance is mutual."

Lisbeth reopened her coordinate tracker for Camilla's phone and saw that it still hadn't moved from its spot in Sundbyberg. Worst-case scenario was that she'd finally gotten smart and ditched it in a dumpster near the airport or something along those lines_._

There was nothing else to really do and her battery was flashing that it had less than ten percent juice. "I'm going to set this up to charge. Is the door to his room unlocked?"

"I don't see why it wouldn't be but don't let the nurses see you in it."

She nodded, slipping her laptop back into its bag. She knew just the right place where no one would look to hide it. There was an outlet behind the couch right next to a recess where part of a radiator had been embedded that was just big enough to shove the laptop into. She just hoped the charger wouldn't break when she shoved the couch back against the wall.

With the deed done, she had just begun to push the couch back into position when the crunch of paper drew her attention to under the hideous sofa. A ball of crumpled paper had caught on the foot of the chair. Curious, she picked up the little ball and checked the window to make sure all the nurses were still away on their rounds before smoothing out the twisted paper with the upmost care.

_Dear Mikael,_

_Please accept this as my resignation from Millennium, effective immediately. I regret the inconvenience it will cause, but circumstances have left me no choice. I wish you and the magazine luck in my absence._

_Sincerely,_

_Erika Berger, former Editor and Chief of Millennium_

Berger? Resigning? Lisbeth wanted to let out the loudest whoop she could after reading the final line. It was more than a resignation letter; it was practically a divorce. The previous day had been the feather that finally broke the camel's back concerning the slowly degrading relationship the two had shared.

As always, Mikael seemed oblivious to the end. Lisbeth wondered if she should feel sorry for him.

Checking the window to see if the coast was clear, she slipped the paper into her jeans pocket before slipping out of the room carrying her hefty stack of tabloids. She avoided throwing it in the trash and would burn it the next time she was home. Although she hated Berger, Mikael didn't need the media frenzy that would follow if one of the nurses decided to snoop through his rubbish bin.

Annika was reading the March copy of National Geographic when Lisbeth flopped down across from her, dropping the papers on the center table. She didn't care for the front-page taglines. What she really wanted were the press conference bits. She'd discovered the night before that her entrance point into the police database had retired and his account had been deactivated accordingly, closing her off from the Svensk Polis database indefinitely. She could still snoop through her impressive list of police email accounts, but first she needed the press clippings to identify whose email to hack.

Her fingers itched to pull out a cigarette as she breezed through the stack of papers. Nothing. The building was still a volatile mess of phosphorus and no investigative team had been cleared to enter.

With that knowledge, she allowed herself a brief recess to the sheltered smoking area by the ambulance bay. The wind was howling off the bay behind the hospital, causing her to exhaust an entire book of matches before giving up and heading back inside. Nature was telling her to quit, she mused darkly.

She circled around the nurses station for a coffee before heading back into the room. Blomkvist was now there, talking to someone from Millennium.

"Can you pass the message along to Christer and Lotta for me? Right, thanks. Bye."

"Berger?"

"Malin. Everyone is going to lay low for now."

Lisbeth just shrugged as she shifted the couch, pulling her laptop out of the hole in the wall.

He pulled his good arm over behind his head, staring at the popcorn ceiling. The sound of Lisbeth beating the keys on the laptop to death was actually quite relaxing. He'd nearly nodded off when he heard her voice barely above a whisper in its tone.

"I acted like an ass to you when you first got in here. I'll try not to in the future." She paused, hammering away at the backspace key, "Be as ass, I mean."

Mikael let out a barking laugh. Lisbeth glared at him as if she were about to punch his face in. "I can rescind my offer, you know."

"Take my laughter as an awkward 'apology accepted' to go with your just as equally awkward apology. You snore like a Gatling gun, by the way."

"Go jump in a lake."

"I will after you hand me the TV remote." His good arm was up just in time to deflect her surprisingly well-aimed throw from over her shoulder. The door clicked open and Annika walked in, giving them both a questioning look. Lisbeth resisted the urge to glare back.

She addressed Mikael as he flipped through the general cable channels for a news report. "I'm going to head home for a while. The girls saw the reports on TV and are inconsolable right now. How did it go?"

"Don't know. General anesthesia seems to have that effect on people. I'll _assume_ it went well."

"Smartass." Annika turned to Lisbeth, who was studying her intently with an unnerving gaze. "I can give you a ride home if you want so you can get your own car. Folkungatan?"

Lisbeth hesitated slightly. Annika still had no idea on her current residence. Lisbeth realized she no longer cared. "No. Fiskargatan 9."

Annika looked as if she had a coronary.

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	11. Chapter 11

_February 3rd_

"I can't believe you live in Mosebacke. I could work all my life and not be able to afford so much as a studio there."

Lisbeth merely grunted in response, pulling her iPhone and opening up her security feed app to spy on the cat. The last time she came home it had systematically de-laced every single shoe she owned while leaving Mikael's untouched. Conniving little shit.

When the app finally connected, the eight security screens were snowy and there was no hairball to be seen.

Her fingers like daggers, she stabbed the menu button before searching out Plague's number. She stared out the window at the police tape that barricaded Götogatan while counting the successive rings. Finally, he picked up.

"Stop fucking with my electrical."

"I'm not doing anything to it," she could hear the computerized metallic clank of metal in the background, followed demonic laughter. "Damn it! You're killing me, Wasp!"

"Too bad" She bit back, "How did you find out where I lived the first time you fucked with my system?"

"You're implying I messed with it multiple times? Maybe you just have electrical problems…"

"Waiting."

"I Googled your name. You should cover your tracks better."

Her eyes widened. "Bullshit."

"Nope. It's on a security school website. Lisbeth Salander. Fiskargatan 9, apartment 5. There a problem, rich girl?"

"Big one."

Her fingers raced to undo the seatbelt tethering her into the car as they approached a red light. "Drop me off here."

"There's only two more-" The car door slammed with a solid _thunk_ and Annika watched Lisbeth's retreating form sprinting through the grounds of St. Catherine's as the sun began to set, leaving her laptop behind.

Annika pressed her forehead into the steering wheel, moaning in pure exasperation. Behind her a car honked, spurring her into the snap decision to turn right at the next stops sign and chase after the petite redhead.

She made it there in record time, parking the car under a tree loaded down with icicles. From the passenger's side she retrieved Lisbeth's laptop bag, the strap caught in the door from when Lisbeth bailed out of the car. She was surprised by its heft and wondered humorlessly if there were several laptops crammed inside as she slung it over her shoulder and walked towards the building entrance.

* * *

><p>Squatting low on the fifth floor landing, Horst passed a thin, stainless steel torsion wrench into the lock of the penthouse inhabited by a V. Kulla.<p>

In the hours after the Millennium bombing, he and Camilla had taken up lodging in central Ostermalm to wait out the initial police and media frenzy that would follow the bombing. It was a complete accident that he had done a simple Google search of his half sister's name and came back with a hit on her address. At first they thought it was a false lead, a joke even.

For a long while, Camilla brooded on what to do next. She had reasoned to him that Lisbeth would be wherever Blomkvist was, but it would only be a matter of time before she would have to leave for a change of clothes or a shower. If Horst could tail her from the hospital all the way back to whatever hole in the wall she actually lived in, they could go from there. It took more time than needed, but eventually, it had all worked out and she had lead him all the way to that same cream colored building that had been listed over the internet.

A bit of slight raking with a pick and the lock clicked, opening him up to the multimillion-dollar penthouse Salander had somehow managed to acquire. A steel plated security system was secured to the wall to him immediate right, a countdown initiating on the screen. _Countdown to what?_ He checked for any obvious security labels, but the system seemed to be a pretty damn good home assembly.

As the timer ticked closer to zero, he removed a small device no bigger than a garage door opener from his paint stained cargo pants. With the click of a button, the screen went dead and the entry light went out. In the orange light of the sunset he placed the jammer back into his pocket before beginning a self-guided tour of the penthouse, his right hand grasped firmly around the concealed butt of Camilla's prized Glock and ready to draw at a moment's notice.

The emptiness of the apartment was almost haunting. Three rooms were furnished and there were few personal effects. There were signs that journalist also inhabited the apartment; a stack of _Millennium_ draft papers sitting on the coffee table in the living room, a wrinkled dress shirt that looked four sizes too large for a woman of Lisbeth's stature hung on the master bedroom door.

He made his way to into an office that looked seldom used. A few A4 binders sat on the corner of the desk. Curiosity got the better of him as he placed the pistol on the edge of the desk and grabbed the top binder. He quickly thumbed through old police reports from the era of typewriters.

An aged Polaroid picture fluttered out from between the pages, landing face down on the hardwood floor. He slipped the open binder onto the desk as he knelt to pick the up the photo and flipped it over to see the empty eyes and gaping mouth of a long dead corpse. Jumping to is feet, he flipped towards the back of the binder, coming face to face with nearly a dozen more grotesque pictures of dead women.

"What the hell is all this shit?" He screamed into the empty apartment, lobbing the binder into the hallway beyond the door. Seconds later it came flying right back at him, smacking him full in the chest with enough force to knock him back into the IKEA desk.

"I don't appreciate people throwing my things." Came a deceptively soft voice from a silhouette backed by the dark shadows filling the hallway. The sound sent his hand scrambling under the binders on the desk for the hidden Glock. The office was at the end of the hallway, with only one-way in and out.

Pistol cocked, he edged his way out of the office and into the hall, checking every corner and empty room. Everything was going downhill fast. Something metallic sounding fell to the floor down the hall as he realized he was coming up on the kitchen. Maybe she would try to swing a frying pan at him. The sound was there again. Definitely pans.

Soon he was at the swinging double doors of the kitchen, finger ready to squeeze the trigger. Camilla would be pissed at him if it all ended this way, without her there to see her sister off to the very end, but this was a very real possibility they had acknowledged _could_ happen. Horst personally didn't give a rats ass how everything ended, so long as he could make it out the front door on his own two feet.

Which suddenly didn't seem so likely as a cast iron fire poker swung down on his outstretched arms.

He howled as he heard the snap of his own wrist, his finger jerking and firing a single shot into a starch white cupboard as he crashed to his knees. Stunned by the attack, he looked up to see the pintsized redhead raise the poker once again, this time aiming for his head.

The gun in his right hand momentarily forgotten, he reached up with his left to grab the poker in mid swing, using it as leverage to pull her into him for a solid punch to the gut. A look of genuine surprise replaced her almost feral face of rage as his fist made contact right below her diaphragm, giving Horst a small window to make his escape as she dropped to her knees.

He could see the door; he was home free if he could get through them and down five flights of stairs. His steel-toed boots crashed across the wood floors, unaware of the cat that had taken up residence in a newspaper box with its tail hanging out into the entryway.

It was a mistake that sent him screaming in bloody earnest as twenty razor sharp claws were suddenly entrenched in his calf and part of his thigh. He frantically tried to extract the cat from his leg before finally deciding to take the cat along for the ride with him as he heard Salander's heavy footsteps giving chase after him.

The elevator doors dinged once he reached the landing, cat still latched on. In a flash she was out the door, grasping the iron rod liked a baseball bat.

The elevator doors opened, she swung, and he fired.

A bullet whistled just under her left elbow as she swung to kill. The tip of the rod struck where his jaw met his skull; blood and teeth flew from his mouth as he fell backwards down the steps and out of her range.

"Coward! Fucking coward!" She called after him as he half crawled, half stumbled down the stairs as blood poured from where the skin had been split open. She could get him another day; she would get both of them one day.

She threw the poker aside when she could no longer hear the thundering of his boots down the steps. Turning her attention to the elevator, she found Annika slumped against the back of the cage, grasping her laptop bag.

In that moment she knew it would never stop. She could deal with break ins, guns in her face and overly muscular freaks of nature. She could even deal with being shot and buried by the very people society says she should trust and love.

But was it worth the suffering of anyone who was close to her? She was like a bad omen; anyone who got close to her suffered terribly. Mimmi, Blomkvist, all the journalists at _Millennium_ and now Annika had all been affected by her personal demons.

Lisbeth dropped to her knees beside her lawyer and friend and shifted the laptop off of her. She was amazed to see not a single mark on the woman. Had the laptop bag actually manage to stop a bullet from less than ten feet away?

Lisbeth was skeptical, but the visible evidence didn't lie. She'd gotten a good look at the gun on the kitchen floor and knew it wasn't a brand to be fucked with.

"What do you have in that bag?"

"A laptop, seven newspapers, and a copy of _Millennium_."

"They should make vests out of all that."

Police sirens howled somewhere on the Slussen causeway. Someone had to have called the cops while they'd been going at it in the kitchen. Lisbeth estimated she had less than four minutes to make her break.

"What are you looking for?"

"My wallet."

She threw the broken laptop across the floor as she dumped the bag's contents across the elevator floor. The bullet had gone straight through the j key and out the other side to be buried somewhere in the newspapers. They soon were also tossed onto the floor as her passport toppled out of a copy of _Expressen_. She slipped that into her inner jacket pocket and found her wallet in the innermost compartment of the bag, wedged beside the new Millennium edition that now sported a single, hollow point bullet. Cop killers. Only a half a centimeter of leather had separated life from grievous injury or even death.

She stopped fumbling and looked up at the woman who had saved her ass when she needed it most. She felt like she should say something. Not necessarily words of comfort or even an apology for all the shit that had befallen her and her brother, but a proper goodbye before disappeared from their lives for who knew how long.

Her voice was harsh and business-like, leaving no room for any stray emotion to break through. Now wasn't the time. "Watch yourself and watch Mikael. Don't let him go anywhere alone. The same goes for you." Out of her pocket she pulled a small can of pepper spray, pressing it into Annika's hand, "It's illegal, but better than nothing. Mikael has a Taser somewhere. Make sure he carries it."

"Where are you going?"

"Away." Lisbeth stood, helping Annika to her feet. She was still shaky, but she would manage fine.

"I'll stay here and keep the police occupied." Lisbeth nodded and turned for the stairs. Three steps down and Annika called out, "Good luck!"

The absurdity of the parting did not escape her as she tried not to slip down the blood-covered stairs. Good luck? Ha! More like good riddance! Why should she wish the one person who had made her life a chaotic hell good luck? The person who's affairs could have easily gotten her killed today and left her husband a widower and her children motherless.

At the bottom of the steps she deviated away from the blood trail leading outside and descended one more level to the garage. With all due haste she pressed the pedal to the floor of her Honda coupe and tore out onto the street, heading in the opposite direction just as the blue flashing lights of police cars passed her heading in towards her apartment. Soon every inch of it would be combed over by scene investigators. Her office alone contained materials that she should have destroyed; she even still had some of the crime scene photos from the women murdered by Gottfried Vanger for fucks sake.

She dug her phone out of her pocket, dialing Annika as she blew through a stale yellow light. She picked up on the first ring.

"Are the police there yet?"

"They just pulled up but aren't inside."

"Go inside my apartment and find my office. Every paper you see needs to be hidden. Pull the covers off the wall vents and shove as much as you can into them."

She dropped the call before anything else could be said. Annika would know what to do. With any luck she would come back and properly destroy everything she'd foolishly kept.

Fishing a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket, she rolled down the window of her car and was greeted with a blast of icy air as she lit up. She was driving without any sense in where she was going. Currently heading south, she pulled a sudden right to head towards Söder hospital. In the parking lot she got out of the car and sat on the hood, looking up at the bright window where Mikael was staying while she finished off her cigarette. She thought of going in and giving him a fair warning, a real goodbye compared to the last time she had departed abroad.

She would go abroad, she decided. Her first stop would be Gibraltar.

After that, she didn't know.

The light on the third floor of Söder General suddenly switched off. With a feeling of great heaviness, she jumped off the hood and got back into the car. The four cylinder lurched to life as she turned on to Ringvägen and headed north to Stockholm-Arlanda.

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	12. Chapter 12

**Sorry for short chapters! I remember when these were almost 6,000 words of awesome…*sigh.***

_February 3rd - 4th_

If anyone on the street saw him he was sure they would scream. Blood poured from Horst's mouth and the flap of skin now hanging from the side of his face where the poker struck him, giving him a certain surreal, walking dead quality.

He kept his arm steady by tucking it into an inside pocket of his blood soaked work jacket. By all accounts he should have been out cold on the fifth floor of Fiskargatan from the vicious strike he'd taken. All he could think about were the two alleyways separating him from the car. If he could get there, he could get out before the street became hot with cops.

His hand nearly ripped the door handle from the car when he crawled into the golden Saab Camilla had stolen. Vaguely he remembered a similar incident involving Niedermann when his idiot older brother tried to question the fearless giant. Niedermann had been leaving and grabbed the door handle to open their father's truck when Jarrod had tried to take a swing at him. The result was a truck that could only be entered through the passenger door and a five-inch long scar across Jarrod's jawline where the metal handle had ripped the flesh from his face.

Horst laughed, more from the overwhelming blood loss than anything else as he gunned the car and drove like a drunk through Mosebacke, passing two cop cars howling through the Söderledstunneln.

* * *

><p>An hour after the call for shots fired went out, Bublanski lifted crime scene tape across the front entrance of Fiskargatan nine, careful not to step in the blood trail that led out onto the street. The building had been cleared of its seven tenants, who now stood on the street outside, glaring at his officers.<p>

The amount of blood loss was massive. So much so he didn't think a mere gunshot was the cause of such gore. There may not have been a body call when he was alerted to the crime scene's possible connection to Camilla Salander, but he strongly believed that would change in the coming day.

At the top of the stairs, Holmberg was just stripping off a pair of gloves, carrying only a single evidence bag with a bullet inside. A larger evidence case that was no more than a glorified blue plastic bin sat in the hallway, containing an abnormally large Apple laptop and messenger bag.

"Something interesting?"

Holmberg shook the bag slightly in front of him, "One hollow point round retrieved from inside a kitchen cabinet door. Otherwise the place is clean, crime-wise."

"Crime-wise? What else is there?"

Holmberg threw the bag haphazardly into the bin, "Follow me." He said simply.

"On the coffee table you'll find a first edition draft copy of the latest _Millennium_. In the master bedroom there's a suit that you'll recognize from CP officer Figuerola's funeral." "And then on the floor of the bathroom you'll see a familiar t-shirt proclaiming 'fuck you you fucking fuck.'"

"Colorful language." Bublanski remarked humorlessly. Even so, the vulgar faded grey t-shirt did seem very familiar.

"Lisbeth Salander."

Both Holmberg and Bublanski turned to see Modig walking into the immense apartment, her face red with the effort of running up five flights of stairs.

"Sonja? Where've you been all this time?"

"I was following the blood trail from here all the way down to Hotel Söder where it just disappeared. The guy must be as big as a bull if he could run as far as Kapellgränd."

"Did you get Annika Giannini's statement as I asked?"

"Yes. She was returning Salander's laptop when a man shot her just as the elevator doors opened. The laptop bag stopped the bullet, but she'll have a good bruise. Then as soon as the shooter fired, Salander came flying out of the apartment like a bat out of hell and struck him in the face with a fire poker."

Holmberg looked skeptical. "I haven't found any fire poker at all or spatter consistent with being struck with such an object."

"It's what she said happened," Modig shrugged, glaring at Holmberg in a way that did not hide her obvious offense at his words, "And if it was Lisbeth Salander swinging it I wouldn't doubt its effectiveness, either."

"Hey! Stop squabbling and find the poker or any other bloody object that could be used as a weapon. This building has a lower level for tenant parking. Check it."

Modig and Holmberg looked at him as if he'd grown two heads before eyeing each other.

Holmberg shifted on his feet, obviously embarrassed at his slip in thought. "I'll go check the bottom floor, then."

"Salander owns a burgundy Honda. See if you can find it." Bublanski called after him. Modig made a move to follow Holmberg out of the apartment, but Bublanski's hand on her shoulder halted her in her steps. "Wait."

"If Giannini was returning the laptop then she knew Salander lived here. What's an unemployed twenty-seven year old and a journalist whose expertise is financial crime doing in an apartment worth at least twenty million kroner?"

"Do you want to talk to Blomkvist while I handle the Super?"

"No," Bublanski said decisively, "Blomkvist has never willingly been forthcoming with me. Go down to St. Gorans and see if Salander has contacted him."

"Call the Super in off the street on your way out."

* * *

><p><em>Now<em>_ boarding at gate 17 Norwegian Air flight 4221 to Malaga, Spain. Thank you._

The sound of the intercom was a faint buzz in her ear as she sprawled across a bench besides a closed Duty Free shop. At five forty-six on a Friday morning, she had been lying low in the international terminal of Stockholm-Arlanda for nearly twelve hours.

She had been far from bored.

After she'd disposed of her car in the long-term parking she hopped on the back of a personnel cart, bound for the international terminal. The last flight to southern Spain had left the hour before; the next flight wouldn't be until the six the next morning. The ticket cost a little over three thousand krona and was a five-hour direct flight.

She wandered the terminal for an hour until she settled on a crowded coffee bar that offered a satisfactory Wi-Fi connection for her phone. Her first plan of action was to send purge instructions to her laptop in the event that the police cracked into it. She doubted they would get past her numerous, but it was a necessary precaution.

Hopefully Annika managed to hide the more damning contents of her office from the sweepers in the vents like she had specified. If not, her undeclared residence would be the least of her worries.

For three hours she sat in an armchair that gave her a clear view of the shop's entrance and the television bolted into the opposite corner. A police report was released shortly after seven thirty, describing a tall white male breaking into a luxury penthouse in Mosebacke and shooting a woman before being wounded and fleeing. No names were being released.

Lisbeth wasn't worried. Stockholm still knew her as a black haired, heavily pierced woman dressed in leather. No one would suspect an auburn haired woman dressed in a black pea coat and jeans just tapping away on an iPhone in the corner, even though her Doc Martins were still mandatory apparel.

At closing she was ushered out of the café and into the main terminal. Those on overnight lay overs were already setting up for the night, so she picked a bench removed from the majority of the sleeping horde and drew her fringed hood over her head. She was restless, but could at least act the part of a sleeping traveler while discreetly going scanning her usual tabs. Nothing of significance piqued her interest as she scanned through the Republic's forum. Only Dakota and SixofOne were in the chat, going on a second hour of arguing the hang-ups of access control lists on government databases.

_Last call for Norwegian Air flight 4221 to Malaga, Spain. Last call._

_Time to go._

The flight was only half full and she took the rare opportunity to grab an entire window row to herself. It was only until the three G's of pressure glued her back in her seat did she truly feel home free.

* * *

><p>About half an hour after the evening shift nurse had come and gone to take his vitals and deliver the evening meal, Blomkvist was sitting upright in bed, watching the evening news. Three days later, the bombing at <em>Millennium<em> was still being widely covered.

Just after Lisbeth had left with his sister, Lotta stopped in with news on the rest of the _Millennium_ staff. The news was good for the most part. Christer had his dressings removed and could see some shapes. Malin's cuts were beginning to heal over well. She also remarked that she not seen or heard from Berger in three days, but didn't dwell on it.

When Blomkvist asked about Cortez, her face immediately fell. Earlier that morning, his leg was amputated seven inches above the knee. Cortez, the journalist who had run three marathons in three days just last fall and was an avid soccer player, was now without one of the most vital tools to fuel his passions outside of _Millennium_. The thought destroyed him.

A rerun of the previous night's Melodifestivalen came on at the conclusion of the news.

"Sonja?"

"Mikael," She came in and stood at the foot of his hospital bed, the light of his bedside lamp not quite reaching her, "There was a shooting in Mosebacke."

At the mention of Mosebacke he grasped for the bed controls, bringing himself to rest fully upright. Annika was going to drop Lisbeth off. "What happened?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out. May I sit?"

He nodded, motioning with his good arm to the chair beside the bed. The couch where Lisbeth had spent the last two nights remained woefully empty as fear firmly settled in his gut. Could Camilla have finally gotten to Lisbeth? No…it didn't fit her methods. None of her attacks had been with guns. They were always with something strange, something she could show off with. Something-

"There was a call to police about the sound of a gunshot in an apartment building. When a team arrived eight minutes later they found a trail of blood leading up the stairs to the top floor penthouse, a bloody fire poker, a laptop bag with a bullet hole in it, and your sister. She'd used the bag to shield herself from her attacker."

Blomkvist suddenly let go of the breath he'd unknowingly been holding. Annika was fine and had been indirectly saved by Lisbeth.

Modig looked at him and leaned in towards, her arms resting on her knees. She was close enough that Blomkvist could see that she'd probably been working almost nonstop since the first bombing on New Years. Five weeks ago. It felt like a lifetime away.

She spoke in a faint whisper, as if the room had been bugged, "Do you know where Lisbeth Salander is?"

How many times had he been asked that question? It was becoming irritating. He wished he knew where she was a quarter of the time. He wasn't her guardian; she didn't have to check in with him everyday with a detailed list of her plans; she was a free citizen of Sweden, for Christ's sake!

In the end he shook his head. "Her business is her own."

"That's right. But she's needed for questioning. It was her who struck whoever had shot at your sister with a fire poker and it was almost certainly her who was initially fired upon in the apartment. I don't like what's going on and neither does Inspector Bublanski."

"With all respect Sonja, no one likes what's going on," he felt his anger beginning to rise, "My arm is useless. Henry's leg has been amputated. Six people are dead. You'd have to be an extremely sadist fuck to enjoy what's going on."

"And a lot more people could wind up in similar straights." She said, her tone beginning to match his, "What do you two know that we don't? What aren't you telling?"

"The extent of my knowledge has already been printed and published. Lisbeth's view is her own and I am unfortunately not privileged enough to know." _And she sure as hell isn't going to trust any of you to clean up the mess. _

Modig looked less than thrilled, but knew she was at the point where nothing she said would change his mind. There was something there, just under the surface and out of reach that she wasn't being told, but for the time being she would let it go. "I understand."

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	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

**In honor of President Obama's re-election, I give you chapter 13! I have no clue if it's 12 pages of semi-lucid rambling, but R&R as always!**

_February 4__th__ – February 17__th_

Camilla flicked ash nonchalantly onto the grey stone floor of the kitchen, staring at the pages of a National Geographic she'd found buried under a month's worth of mail stacked in the foyer. She looked up at the clock nailed to the wall above the stove, the minute hand only moving four minutes since she last lifted her head from a picture of mangroves in Sri Lanka.

With something of a growl, she threw the magazine across the room, landing just shy of the trash bin. What the hell was taking him so long?

She stood, walking into the music room where Sandström's cellphone sat atop the piano. Her fingers absently danced across a few of the higher keys before she opened up the dated Nokia to dial Horst's phone. Seven rings later it skipped to voicemail and she slammed the phone shut and dragged a hand across her face.

Sleep had eluded her for days. Ever since the news report came out declaring that once again her sister had defied death, she'd been shut up in the kitchen with Horst's phone to her ear and journalist's stolen laptop at her fingertips.

'_I gave you one fucking job! One!'_

Things went downhill fast from there. An hour into the screaming match between a strung out Jarrod and herself and Sandström started to panic. It took two black eyes and a powerful kick to the stomach for Horst to remind him that they were doing him a favor by keeping him alive while they were there. Camilla thought he was lucky Horst wasn't Ronald. A black eye was usually accompanied a broken skull and fatal brain hemorrhaging.

Since then the paunchy little shit was nowhere to be seen or heard. She wondered if he was trying to plot something. He was dangerously stupid enough to try, at least. More than once she had had the fleeting thought that she should just kill him and get it over with. Camilla had a good feeling he was the main source of the _Millennium_ leak and deserved what was eventually coming to him.

But now all that would have to wait until she fixed the big fucking mess that was turning into her sister. Bomb number one: nobody home. Lundagatan: didn't live there anymore. Bomb number two: didn't work. Maybe she should have went ahead and shot her in Central Station the day before she'd killed Teleborian. Sure she still had the motorcycle club and drug dealers that needed immediate dealing with, but neither would have given her the same satisfaction as taking care of her sister once and for all.

Fiskargatan had been the best break she'd caught yet. It was amazing what a simple google search she'd run three days previously had turned up. She'd laughed for almost five minutes before dragging Horst in to see for himself how careless her sister had been. There was an irony there that Camilla would thoroughly enjoy pointing out when she finally met her sister face-to-face again.

Suddenly the windows seemed almost to implode on themselves as a loud boom came from the front yard. In a split second she had the curtains yanked open to the sight of Sandberg's golden Saab wagon embedded in a rosebush, narrowly missing a dormant cherry tree and several pines planted nearby.

Within seconds she was through the house and out the front door. The seatbelt alarm was alive and chirping loudly, while the dome light flicker pathetically. A porch light came on across the street just as Horst fell out of the car and face down on the pavement. A door slammed somewhere in the neighborhood as she watched her half-brother half-heartedly crawl towards the front door, clutching one arm close to him.

Camilla had no time to deal with whatever he'd gotten himself into and grabbed him by the back of his sweatshirt, hoisting him up onto unsteady legs. Her hand felt wet as she hissed at him to get inside before giving him a shove in the direction of the front door.

A neighbor across the street began making their way down the front stairs of their porch. Faces began to poke out from behind curtains, now curious at the sound of the Saab mowing down Sandström's shrubbery.

"Everything alright?"

Camilla turned abruptly to see the woman from across the street standing on the sidewalk less than eight feet away from her. What the woman thought she could accomplish in a bathrobe, Camilla had no idea, but she tried her best to look sheepish. Standing under the street lamp, she could see that the woman wore a god-awful pink robe and matching hair curlers.

"Just too much to drink is all," she began in as an apologetic tone as possible, "The fence and the rose bushes are worse off than him."

"Are you sure?" The woman insisted, "It looked like he was staggering quite a bit!"

Camilla shrugged, "That's what booze can do to you."

"I suppose-"

"No, really," She looked down and did her best to hide her horror at the large bloodstain covering the paving stone beside her foot. The woman continued to stare at her with distrustful eyes as Camilla scooted her foot over the stain. "He's built like a tank. Sorry for the disturbance."

She held her ground as the woman made her way back across the street. When the porch light finally flickered off, she raked her feet across the flowerbed, kicking dirt over the trail of blood that led all the way to the front door and into the house. More blood slicked the foyer's linoleum, mingling with the mud and dirt that had accumulated there. Horst sat in the dining room, holding a scrunched white t-shirt that was quickly becoming soaked to the side of his face.

He swiped a hand at her as she removed the towel and began prodding the flaps of bloody scalp and skin with the tips of her fingers. With all the blood it was hard to tell, but she guessed it would be a roughly thirty-stitch job to get everything put back together.

She left him there to rummage through her backpack, finding a sewing kit with just enough string to make the sutures required and a reasonably strong needle. When she returned to the dining room she pulled up a chair alongside of Horst and began closing the gaping wound, settling into a slow rhythm.

After a few rows of stitches, she finally felt calm enough to ask about what had happened in Mosebacke.

"Your sister had a- ow, fuck-!" The sound of her hand making contact with the good side of his face echoing into the kitchen. For a moment, she quit tugging the thread through his face, her eyes daring him to make another sound. When he'd sufficiently calmed down, she returned to her work, rubbing a wet cloth across the side of his face to get a clear view of what she still had left to do.

"She walked in while I was there. I almost got her, but there was this fucking cat-" he stopped and inhaled sharply as she pulled the string through the seventeenth suture, "-and then someone stepped out of the elevator and I missed so I shot them instead."

When she was finished, she found her handiwork decent enough even if her patient squirmed too much. The sutures definitely looked much better than the few attempts she'd made on herself after sustaining various injuries that she couldn't go to an ER for. By the time she had the small sewing packed up in her bag and the bloody clothing burning in the fireplace Horst was out cold on the living room couch with a floral pillow under his head, slightly tinted from the freshly sutured wound.

* * *

><p>Mikael's release from the hospital came sixteen days after the initial bombing. At a quarter to five, Annika stopped in to complete the chain of transfer. Wound care was more or less like when he'd broken his arm as a teen. Wear a bread bag over the arm to keep the graft from getting wet. Don't move or stretch the graft. Don't scratch it. The last order was proving the most difficult to abide by.<p>

Since the night she disappeared, he had neither heard from nor seen Lisbeth. Fiskargatan was still a heavily monitored crime scene with a round the clock guard from what he'd heard from Annika. Neither of them would have been the least surprised to hear there was also a stakeout at the Lundagatan apartment.

Staring out the window of Annika's car, he wondered where in the literal world Lisbeth had fled to. Annika had said she'd taken her passport with her; that meant she'd gone abroad. Lisbeth had never told him about her travels almost three years prior. Based on the slight tan she had when she came back, he guessed somewhere around the equator. Maybe the tropics. He also knew she had a lawyer based in Gibraltar that had solicited her purchase of the Fiskargatan apartment.

In the end though, he really didn't have a single clue. He could be completely wrong and she could easily be laying low in some hideously expensive hotel smack in the middle of Stockholm. What did he really know about her?

He heaved another sigh, causing Annika to hazard a quick glance over at him staring out the window.

"Talk to me. Your being so quiet over there it's scaring me."

"Nothing." He attempted to shrug, but the heavy sling across his right shoulder prevented him from going so while at the same time pulled on his grafts. Annika continued to give him sideways looks until he finally gave up and gave her his default response. "Just my grafts."

She wasn't buying it. "You have codeine in your prescription bag for that," she said turning onto the long street that ended with a cul-de-sac and eventually her home. "What's really bothering you?"

"Let me think; maybe it's the fact that Lisbeth's being hunted like an animal again for saving your life?"

"She's not being hunted like an animal. They just want her for questioning."

"It's the same fucking difference!"

"Try not to speak like that in front of my daughters, okay Mikael?"

They had pulled up onto the gravel drive of Annika's home. A curtain slightly twitched as the gravel crunched under the car. Probably either one of the girls or Enrico's infuriating aunt. Mikael continued to stare out the side window when Annika shut off the car's engine, but his hand jumped to her arm as she made a move to open the driver side door.

"Hang on. Don't get out yet. There's someone sitting in that black car watching us."

"I know. They've been there every day for almost two weeks now."

Mikael's head snapped to face her suddenly, "And you haven't gone over and asked them what the hell they're doing?"

"I'm not sure I want to try!"

"Right then," Mikael struggled to undo his seatbelt with his right hand, the interior car alarm going off by the time he managed to undo it and stagger out of the vehicle. "Then I'll go ask them myself since you don't care to know who's been watching your house and family for two weeks."

He barely glanced at his sister before turning and walking down the rain-soaked street, ignoring her cries to come back.

When he got closer he saw the car had two men, both looking down at their laps with firm expressions. At once he thought that Bublanski had put Annika's house under surveillance in case Lisbeth tried to come back. Even after working a triple murder investigation and gutting every bit of her life apart in the process they had yet to figure out that Lisbeth didn't stick around.

He brought his good fist up and banged on the window, glaring at the two men. "Excuse me, what the hell are you doing staring at my sister's house?"

Neither of them looked up at the sound, but the one closest to him pressed a laminated badge to the window. Blomkvist squinted at it for a moment, before pulling back in complete confusion at the large blue 'M' at the top of the ID.

"Milton Security?" he said aloud, more to himself than to the men in the car. Of all the people who could be sitting in a car in front of his sister's house, he would suspect Milton the least likely. "What the hell is Milton doing here?"

No response. Even Lisbeth was more forthcoming than these two. "I know you can hear me in there! I guess I'll just call Armansky…" He held up his phone, still not even earning so much as a look from either man as they clicked away on their laptops.

"You're really not going to say anything are you?"

Mikael groaned. It was hopeless. Not one glance or any sense of acknowledgement other than flashing their Milton badge. If Mikael had more energy he might have smashed in the windows and demanded some sort of explanation, but instead he just felt defeated and cold in the mid February wind.

Annika sat on the white wooden steps leading up to the front door, looking straight at him as he walked stiffly up to her. "Curiosity sated? Enrico's almost done making supper."

"They're from Milton Security."

She held the door open for him as he stepped into the warm and impeccably decorated home. Her youngest daughter suddenly flits past her holding a red spiral notebook with 'math' written across the front in all capital letters. "What? Why?"

"That's what I plan to find out," he said, hugging his youngest niece as she put her arms around him and tossing the notebook aside. His phone began to ring inside his front jacket pocket while both his sister and niece rolled their eyes at the irritating jingle.

There was no caller ID displayed on the phone's screen when we pressed it up against his ear. "Speaking?"

"I heard you intended to call me." Armansky. Mikael checked the caller ID again, but it came up blank. It then occurred to him that at this time of night he'd probably be calling from home.

"You're damn right I did. There's an unmarked car from Milton outside of my sister's house. Neither myself or my sister sent for one so there's obviously been some sort a mistake made, plus they seem to suffer from select mute-ism."

"They're doing their job by not addressing you. As to why they're there, there's been no mistake. "

"How-" Blomkvist looked up to see his sister glowering at him and he realized he was shouting into the phone. "How has there been no mistake? Dragan, I'm looking right at the car that neither I or my sister's family want them here!"

"There's been no mistake," he repeated in his usual somber tone, "Lisbeth had them hired and I agreed to it. There is also another car outside of Holger Palmgren's care home. You would do well to leave them in peace. They're there for your protection."

"Lisbeth?"

"Yes."

Suddenly something clicked inside his head. Of course she would, he realized. She hadn't just 'fled' after what had happened. She hadn't 'fled' to avoid the police at all. She'd left to keep everyone she knew _safe_.

Somewhere, most likely in an entirely different country, she was laying low, but definitely not idle. There would be a computer in front of her with any number of screens and windows open, all with one main goal.

Getting a bigger gun.

His voice became hard, taking on the same tone he would use in a confrontation. "When did she speak with you? Has she spoken with you since?"

"Two weeks ago. It was the first and last time she's spoken with me since January."

"And that's it? She just ordered a pair security cars and hung up?"

Armansky groaned on the other end of the line. Mikael didn't care if he was trying the man's patience. It was what he got for keeping Lisbeth's request secret from him for two weeks. "Why would she do anything else?"

"Did she mention where she was or where she was going?"

"No. Why would she? I'm her ex-boss."

Blomkvist could think of nothing else to ask and once they exchanged the usual pleasantries, flipped the phone shut and placed it in his breast pocket before walking through the living room and into his sister's immaculate kitchen. Enrico's aunt sat in her usual place in front of the TV, watching a news program that Blomkvist could only describe as a slap in the face of journalism.

Through the archway leading into the kitchen, he saw Annika sitting at the small eat-in table across from her youngest daughter while Enrico danced around back and forth between the stove and counter, prepping dinner.

Annika looked up from checking the messy scrawl of her daughter's math homework when she noticed him walk in. "Well?"

Blomkvist grabbed a wooden stool from the kitchen island and dragged it to the empty side of the kitchen table. His legs were flush against the underside of the table as he spoke to his sister. "Lisbeth ordered two security details. One for here and one for Palmgren's care home."

"What-"

"Lisbeth? Lisbeth Salander?"

Blomkvist dragged a hand across his face at the sound of Angelina's voice. She had something of a gift at picking up on conversations that she'd best stay out of along with a hideous sense of timing. He still couldn't quite understand why his sister had let the woman live with them, neither her nor her husband were very keen about her eccentricities, although he vaguely remembered a conversation some months ago about her being evicted from her nursing home. For what, he didn't care to know.

The wooden floor bounced as Angelina walked in, shaking with excitement at having something to talk about. "She was on the news today!"

Enrico, sensing nothing but trouble coming, turned his attention away from the stove for the briefest of seconds, giving his aging aunt a warning glare as she hovered by his wife and brother-In-law. She completely ignored him, instead looking through massive bug-eyed glasses at Annika with an expectant gaze.

Annika refused to look up at the older woman, gluing her eyes to the space on the table between her daughter and Blomkvist. "She's been on the news everyday, auntie."

"You should help the police catch her, then! She gets into too much trouble to be so innocent!"

"Whatever you say, auntie."

"Why do you ignore me like this, Annika? I know what you're thinking! 'Angelina's crazy! Angelina doesn't know what she's talking about'-but if I know one thing, it's that that girl is not normal. Why do you run away from the police if you're innocent? Can you answer that? No! So, she has to-"

"Oh for god's sake Angelina! You watch that ridiculous sensationalist 'news' program eighteen hours a day and then try to pass it off as if it's relevant information! You have no idea what you're saying half the time at the best of times, so can you please shut it and save us the hearing loss!"

The kitchen went dead silent. Enrico seemed at a loss for what to do, holding an empty plate in mid air with his mouth slightly agape. Annika, while not so animated, had all the fury of hell burning in her eyes at the sound of his outburst.

"Mikael. Porch. Now." Annika stood, hauling her brother up from the stool by the back of his collar while looking sternly at Angelina, "You, go watch TV until it's time to eat."

Blomkvist barely managed to keep himself upright when Annika shoved him out onto the porch. The white wooden door shook in its frame as she slammed it behind her, her face livid. "What the hell was that?"

"How do you put up with her, Annika? What amazing power do you have that makes it bearable to live with that woman?"

"I ignore her you fucking idiot! She would have gotten fed up with having a completely dead audience if you hadn't shouted at her and gave her another minute!"

"Why? So I would have to put up with another minute of her stupidity?"

With a speed he never thought she possessed, he barely caught the sudden movement of her hand drawing back before the sound of her hand meeting his cheek broke through the air, the impact forcing him to see stars.

"What she says might be a load of conservative bullshit," she said through gritted teeth, "but at least she doesn't act like an asshole about it. So help me Mikael and I will kick you out on the curb if you pull a stunt like that again. You want some real advice right now? Stop bitching and get to work. Use my computer, use my phone, even use my motherly chauffeur services, but don't think I'm going to stand for you acting like a prick in front of my family again. Are we clear?"

* * *

><p>Blomkvist clasped his hands together on a curb in Ersta as his sister's forest green Volvo pulled away from the curb. She would be back to pick him up in three hours unless he called her with a change of plans. It'd been three days since his release from the hospital, most of which he spent formulating the best plan to track down Lisbeth and stay away from his aunt-in-law. The latter he had for the most succeeded in while the former was proving to be just as difficult as he thought it would be.<p>

Before him was the eight patient group home Palmgren had been transferred to in early November the previous year. A lone man in a familiar blue winter jacket was hunched over a flowerbed digging away with a small trowel.

"You're gardening in mid-February?"

"Planting bulbs for summer." Palmgren seemed unfazed by his sudden intrusion, getting up from the ground without a single tremor. "How are you, Blomkvist?"

"Freezing."

"Come inside, then." The older man tossed the trowel into the bag before leading Blomkvist up the steps to the enclosed porch. He took his time putting the gardening supplies away, not paying the journalist much attention. Blomkvist noticed the open wooden chess set sitting on the small table tucked under one of the windows among the many things spread around the enclosed porch. He wondered how much time Palmgren spent reading and practicing only to be crushed by Lisbeth in their games.

"Did you see that black car parked across the street with the two men inside when you pulled up? They've been parked there for two weeks now." Blomkvist's head snapped up at the unexpected question. So Palmgren didn't know he was being watched, either.

"There's a car parked down the street from my sister's house as well."

"I don't understand it at all. I can knock on the glass for an hour and the men inside won't even take one look up at me."

Mikael smirked. "I know the feeling. They're from Milton actually. I just found out a few day ago that they've been stalking us both."

Palmgren finally looked up, the expression on his face unreadable. "Armansky is in on this, is he?"

"He is. And so is Lisbeth."

At the mention of Lisbeth, Palmgren's face immediately lit up. "Is she? I thought she didn't work for Milton anymore."

"She doesn't. She hired the two teams as a private client."

"That's quite an expense," Palmgren said slowly.

"She's managing very well."

"I don't want to know," He waved a hand to keep Blomkvist from elaborating any further. There were some aspects of his former ward's life that were better off unheard by his ears.

"My gut and my sister have told me she's probably left the country again. The last time I saw her was when my sister offered to drive her home from the hospital. After that something happened at her apartment that nearly got my sister and herself killed." Blomkvist shrugs. "She has no where to really go anymore except away. Her best friend is living in her Lundagatan apartment. My apartment's burnt to the ground."

"I've been following the news closely since January. Whatever's going on right now is family business, so to speak."

Blomkvist nodded.

Palmgren smiled sadly. The man was much more perceptive than anyone would give him credit for. Blomkvist wondered what else the other man might have picked up on over the last few weeks. If there was anyone out there alive who could help him hunt down the two Salander twins, it would be the man in front of him.

"Your arm," Palmgren said, pointing at Blomkvist's blue sling, "And whatever other injuries and damages _Millennium_ suffered would have been a horrific offense, the last straw."

"She wanted blood. The day I was admitted to the hospital she was in such a rage. If she'd found Camilla..." Blomkvist trailed off, shaking his head. He could still see the look of fury on her face when she first walked into him room that night, how every muscle was tense with the urge to lash out at the first provocation. There was no sisterly reunion waiting at the end of the road.

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	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

**So here's chapter 14! I'm finally getting better and healing from my writer's block! Please leave a review!**

_February 17__th__ – 20__th_

"So once again, Lisbeth is finding herself at another set of crossroads." Palmgren stared down at the table as he spoke. "She'll do anything to protect you, Mikael. Now she has to decide the best course of action to achieve that goal."

"And I'll do anything to keep her safe from herself. She's spent enough of her life within the walls of institutions. Another twenty years in a prison cell isn't the life she deserves."

"Neither is a life spent fearing for the lives of the ones you love." Palmgren stabbed a crooked finger into empty air. "Lisbeth would willingly lock herself into Kungsholmen if it meant you, Millennium, myself, and anyone she knows can live on peacefully. She's already left the country for what I suspect is to distance herself from anyone Camilla may use as a puppet or as an example. But pacifism is not in her nature. She can only stay away for so long just as her sister can only wait for so long. Whether we drag it out for months or years, the end will be the same."

"Then let's rewrite the ending to this. The police are fumbling in the dark as usual. They know nothing about Camilla. I know nothing."

Palmgren leaned back in his chair. While he would always remain steadfastedly in Lisbeth's corner, Blomkvist knew the older man was considering the consequences of any involvement in her affairs. Whatever side or outcome he may have personally rooted for, Palmgren chose his next words carefully.

"How do you know this is the right thing to do, Mikael?"

"What do you mean? Of course it is!"

"I don't doubt your heart being in the right place, Mikael. But can you deal with the possibility of causing more harm than good? Interference in something like this shouldn't be thought upon so rashly."

"I've had almost a month to think about this, Holger. The police being brought in is a painful compromise. Camilla would be locked up for life sentence without a doubt. But I might lose Lisbeth over it."

Palmgren nodded. "I see. Then in that case Camilla had only a single foster family for five years in Upplands-Vasby, an hour north of here."

"Just one? That's strange."

"That's what I thought. Now? Suspicious would be a the proper term for it."

Blomkvist made a face at Palmgren's cryptic statement.

"I only met Camilla once, in the ER after she and Lisbeth had beaten each other senseless. Lisbeth had broken Camilla's nose and cheekbone while Camilla managed to split her sister's lip open. Now, you're familiar with the laws regarding the medical treatment of a minor, yes?"

"A parent or guardian has to sign over consent."

"Exactly! I signed off for Lisbeth to have four stitches put in. We were there for maybe an hour, and yet Camilla, who'd sustained far worse, just got up and left before the police could arrive for questioning."

"I don't see the suspicion in that."

"In the case of a minor, again, a parent or guardian must be on hand for questioning. Not only was her foster family absent from the hospital when they surely would have been notified of her injuries, they were not there to press charges either. Lisbeth was entirely guilty of it; there were probably twenty witnesses when it happened. Looking back on that incident now, I'm certain the reason why no one showed up and Camilla left was-"

"They couldn't show up."

"And that's only half the story! You need to hear the rest! Two days after the incident, I called the secretary at the child services agency to get Camilla's foster parent's telephone number. I was completely ready to pay whatever medical expenses the girl had accrued on behalf of Lisbeth's right hook, but whenever I tried to get through to the family, the number had been disconnected. I go into work a week later to retrieve the file, the address they had given me had been empty and up for sale for three years. She lived with someone, but it wasn't the two people listed in her file."

"She was taken by Zalachenko."

"Without the word of the woman herself I doubt we'll ever be able to prove it, but mark my words that Camilla Salander wound up with her father. As long I live I will stand by that theory. And why wouldn't Zalachenko take in his younger daughter? The daughter, who according to Lisbeth, would always go and hug him before he left while conveniently denying all the savage beatings of her own mother? She was very, _very_ bright in school. No doubt he could use that to his advantage when she got older."

"You're right about that. There's no way the police will ever figure that out. Not without a joint force between Sweden and Estonia, and Zalachenko's successors have been paying them off for years. She's been completely brainwashed since she was a little girl."

"The optimistic side of my brain, which I must admit has severely withered away since my stroke, says maybe Stockholm Syndrome. Realistically though, why should only one twin succumb to it? They had equal chance and opportunity to be the victim or the savior. Why did they split in different directions?"

"Because Camilla is a coward. She was saving her own hide, mother and sister be damned. And look where that got her? Daddy paid for her to go off to chemistry school as long as she came back home to cook meth and kill prostitutes that got out of line."

They sat out on the covered porch for another hour spent mostly in silence until Annika's green Volvo pulled up to the curb. Before Blomkvist left Palmgren retrieved his old case files from a spare room so Blomkvist could see the discrepancies for himself. The car hadn't even stopped moving when Blomkvist jumped out with the files tucked under his slung up arm, nearly running to his sister's home office.

He pulled up all sorts of registries and databases. The number, now in use by a Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson, had been unregistered from ninety-three to ninety-seven. Within the same time span, the address listed had also been lying vacant in the aftermath of a foreclosure the year prior.

Once more, there were going to be some serious questions to be answered when everything settled down. Either a gross oversight had occurred or yet another cover-up was to blame.

The sound of his two nieces moving around and laughing just outside the office doors signaled the imminent start of dinner. Almost as an afterthought in those moments before he would get up and join them, he opened up his Hotmail account in vain hope that Lisbeth had contacted him.

**From**: _EBerger_

Is it too late to say I'm sorry?

Blomkvist looked on in astonishment at the email before him. _EBerger_.

A week after the bombing, her house had gone on sale and was sold in two days. Her cellphone had been disconnected. In the span of nine days she'd managed to disappear just as efficiently as Lisbeth.

Twenty-two years of trust and friendship. Gone.

**From**: _MBlomkvist_

**To**: _EBerger_

What can I say, Erika? You crossed a line. Maybe this has been coming for a while and I just didn't see it until it was too late. You changed. I don't think we can go back to what we had if you continue keeping me in the dark about what's going on. What happened to trust?

**From**: _EBerger_

**To**: _MBlomkvist_

I understand that you think I don't trust you. I've kept a lot of things from you lately and I'm sorry about how we left things off at the hospital. If it's any consolation I felt like a sack of shit almost immediately afterwards.

I would have said something sooner but my computer crashed a couple weeks ago and I lost track of my phone at the airport when I left. I had to get away from it all and caught the first flight out of Stockholm the morning after the bombing.

Blomkvist frowned to himself. Something about the email's writing style was just…_off_. It was too straightforward and explanatory for Erika. He read over the email again and again in the darkness of his sister's office, trying to make sense the awkward message.

With a few keystrokes he brought up the departure board for Stockholm-Arlanda. The bombing happened on a Saturday, which means Berger had left on Sunday. At five after six that morning the first departure took on a four-hour flight to Malaga, Spain. He could find nothing remarkable about the moderately sized Spanish city that could possibly have held Berger's interest for the last two weeks. Again he found himself at dead end. _Unless…_

Lisbeth.

The idea was just as absurd as the email. Had she taken over Berger's account? It would be a small drop in the bucket compared to what he knew she was capable of.

There was only one way for him to know. He exited out of the airport website and stared at the email once more. Somehow he had to ask just the right question. He read through one last time, zeroing in on he hospital comment.

**From**: _MBlomkvist_

**To**: _EBerger_

I'm sorry to hear about that. Did you mean what you said back at the hospital?

**From**: _EBerger_

**To**: _MBlomkvist_

I meant every word. What happened at _Millennium_ can't stop us. We need to send a clear message that this isn't going to shut us down. We have to stick to our guns here or we're nothing.

_Camilla is as good as dead. I'm not backing down now._

Nothing new there. He'd long given up hoping she would change her mind. Now he could only hope that she would stay safe and under Bublanski's radar.

**From**: _MBlomkvist_

**To**: _EBerger_

That doesn't mean we need to start back up right this second. We took a critical hit last month. Things need time to settle down. The police are still combing through the building. It's not safe for us to go in yet.

_Wait for everything to die down. Fiskargatan is still being investigated._

As he waited for her reply, his sister nudged the door slightly, peeking in. "Mikael?"

"In a second."

"Whatever you're doing can wait. Dinner. Now."

**From**: _EBerger_

**To**: _MBlomkvist_

I can find a new building.

_I'll find a safe house. _Or, _Find a new Millennium._ The message was too vague to be certain.

**From**: _MBlomkvist_

**To**: _EBerger_

We can look into that together. I don't want you doing all the work by yourself.

My brother-in-law's aunt has been pestering me about Lisbeth ever since I moved into my sister's house last week. I need a break. Can I come see you?

**From**: _EBerger_

**To**: _MBlomkvist_

It's late here. I'll think about it in the morning.

_No_.

The conversation now over, Blomkvist switched off his sister's desktop PC and climbed the stairs to younger niece's room, which had become his for the duration of his temporary stay. Thankfully she had no hard feelings about the move and had gracefully taken refuge in her older sister's room without a word.

A glance at the alarm clock on the end table said it was just past eleven at night.

By quarter after six he was up again, a new email sitting impatiently in his inbox.

**From**: _EBerger_

**To**: _MBlomkvist_

Remember a few years back when you had a wasp problem at Sandhamm? I have a up-and-coming journalist friend that has a massive nest hanging from their eaves. I don't remember how you said you got rid of them, but do you think you could give a few pointers to him?

**From**: _MBlomkvist_

**To**: _EBerger_

Does he live in Stockholm or out in your yuppie colony?

He heard the open and closing of the front door four times in a forty-five minute stretch as he sat in his sister's office between playing minesweeper while waiting for a reply to come. Now it was only him and Angelina left, but thankfully she never rose before eleven. He still had three and a half hour of peace and quiet to himself before the channel 29 "news" came on. He could almost swear that the volume level went up by ten clicks every day until Annika would change the station and the volume to something more neutral.

After getting five clicks into a third round of minesweeper, a reply popped up in his inbox.

**From**: _EBerger_

**To**: _MBlomkvist_

Aren't you the jokester? He lives near the university, so not close, but not very far either. He works at Syster and Bror on campus during the afternoon. You could meet him there tomorrow if you'd like.

**From**: _MBlomkvist_

**To**: _EBerger_

I'll drop in around three.

* * *

><p>Half an hour before the mystery meeting was set to begin, Blomkvist stepped out of a cab in front of Syster and Bror. He hadn't stepped foot on the campus since the mid eighties, but the place remained virtually the same. Out of pure nostalgia he almost had the driver drop him off another three blocks down the street at the media studies office, but he want to stake the restaurant out before the meeting first.<p>

Not knowing who to expect, he took a seat near the window and order a coffee. Based on the email Blomkvist was sure he was looking for a man. Based on the setting he would be either a university student or a young professional.

And if Blomkvist knew anything at all about Lisbeth's circle of associates, he was probably looking for someone carrying a laptop bag.

At quarter after three, a man in his mid twenties carrying a small leather laptop bag stepped off of a bus twenty meters away from the coffee shop. Despite the rain that had started around three, he continued to stand there by the bus sign, scanning the restaurant windows. When his eyes fell on Blomkvist, he nodded slightly before finally jogging up to the entrance.

The wooden chair across from Blomkvist scraped across the ground as the man took a seat, placing his bag across the back of the chair. He leaned forward onto his elbows, looking extremely amused.

"Kalle Blomkvist."

"That's my nickname," Blomkvist placed his paper cup down on the glass table, "What's yours?"

"Janne."

"Do you have something for me, Janne?"

"That I do," he said, picking up the bag from the ground and fishing around inside the front pocket. Blomkvist noted the size of the Mabook that looked to be inside of the main compartment. Definitely a student.

Finally he seemed to find what he was looking for, producing a small, black phone that he slid across the table. "Pre-paid phone. Fifty international minutes. Use it wisely and throw it away in two weeks. Wasp sent me a message about your situation."

"And what's my situation?"

"You're being watched by the police and Milton Security. You and all your closest friends and family are having your phones and emails monitored. Twice as hard to stay under the radar for whatever you're doing, but it's possible."

"I don't care about the police or Milton. It's Wasp's radar that I can't escape."

"Wasp is protecting you." He shrugged. "Or so Wasp says. You can never tell with the internet. Maybe they're really a sicko trying to kill you in some elaborate fashion."

"It's definitely protection, but not the warm and fuzzy kind." Blomkvist stood up and threw a handful of bills on the table as a tip. "Thanks for the phone."

"See you around, Kalle Blomkvist."

The rain stopped and Blomkvist hailed a cab. Just as it was pulling away from the curb he looked up at the restaurant to see Janne take out his laptop. For the half hour ride to Stakët, he examined the small flip phone. There was no carrier logo or any other identifying features, as if it had been created for the sole purpose it would now serve.

The black Milton car had moved three car lengths closer to the house when the cab pulled up. The guard must have changed when he had left.

It was a Tuesday, so no one would be home. Even Angelina was out at the senior playing bridge until eight. Blomkvist smiled. He had the house and the TV to himself for the first time since coming to Annika's house. He still had another hour before the girls would be home. Then Annika would come in an hour after that and Enrico wouldn't be home until after seven.

With not a sound or soul in the house, Blomkvist sprawled out across the living room couch and turned the phone on for the first time. The screen turned from black to white with three little dots flashing as it booted up. It was a relatively easy phone to use, which couldn't have been an accident. He vaguely wondered if it were also water and shock resistant.

Under voice messages there was a bolded "ONE" in all capital letters.

"One new message."

"_Hey Kalle. You caught onto my emails quickly. Smart move. The longer I try to write like Berger the more likely I am to kill myself. Thanks for saving me the pain."_

Blomkvist's jaw clamped shut. This was the first time he'd heard Lisbeth be so openly hostile to Erika. Although their partnership was almost definitely over, twenty-two years of friendship still left a mark and a willingness to defend what wasn't there anymore.

"_Janne should have briefed you on the boring details. Fifty minutes, throw it out after two weeks, no known outgoing calls; all the stuff they say in the movies. Now it's time for you to learn how the phone works and what it's for. I've pre-programmed four numbers into the phone, all of them untraceable._

_The first number is wired to a bank account in Zurich with twenty million kronor wired to it. I don't care how you use it, but a new _Millennium_ building and apartment would be a good start. Call the number and then punch in the amount you need; it'll automatically transfer the money to another account you'll be receiving a card to in the mail soon. Try not to move more than thirty thousand at a time or else you'll attract suspicion."_

Wennerström money. It was a small drop in the two and half billion she'd pulled from his account, but is was more money that he could ever dream of having control of. He could buy the entire city block that Millennium sat in with half that amount.

For all it was worth, he didn't want a single ore of it.

But for all it was worth, he wanted to know why Lisbeth had given it to him. Something more than just a new office for _Millennium_ was on her mind.

"_Second is Plague. Don't expect much from him without maxing out the Swiss account budget. He'll do things for less, but not for you._

_Third is my assistant who you met to get the phone. He's the cheaper route, but not always the most reliable. He's more for legwork. Use him to move a sofa or tail someone; I don't care. Just leave any kind of computer work up to Plague. _

_The final number is basically a self-destruct. In two weeks, dial number four and then dump it somewhere, preferably in a deep body of water. Pull out the SIM card and cut it up with scissors first though._

_No stupid shit from you in the meantime. I'm watching."_

"End of message."

When the phone prompted him to replay, save, or delete the message, he hit save and pressed the phone to his lips. It felt good to hear her voice again.

**Please review!**


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

_February 20__th__ – 24__th_

For sometime he lay there on the couch, replaying the message over and over again. She'd given him the perfect tools to find her. Plague, the one person who Blomkvist could give just as much credit to as his sister for destroying the prosecutor's defense last year with the dirt he'd pulled from Teleborian's laptop. Then there was the college student he'd seen earlier that day, though Lisbeth's message left him wondering how much he could trust the younger man with certain matters.

And then there was the completely absurd sum of money that he didn't even want to think about, yet knew it was likely the most important clue he had to go by.

Someone had to move all the money into an account. Lisbeth might have been able to rip off banks in Zurich and walk out with suitcases full of cash two years prior, but that money all had to go somewhere.

And two and a half billion was simply too much for her to look after alone. Someone had to be moving and administering the money for her just like someone had to have bought the apartment on her behalf.

_Dear Ms. Salander,_

Suddenly he sat bolt upright as if Lisbeth herself had pressed a Taser to his skin. He had read for himself the name of her solicitor one day in Mellqvist as he sat calmly slicing through a stack of her mail. Her money man.

Blomkvist needed that name. He knew where he could find that name.

Before he could think otherwise, he flipped open the phone that had been clutched in his hand and dialed Janne.

One ring.

Two rings.

"So soon, Kalle Blomkvist?"

Blomkvist pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd bet all twenty five million kronor Lisbeth had told her hacker lackie to call him that. "How much do you object to breaking into an active crime scene and possibly assaulting a police officer?"

"I might be able to look the other way for a price."

"If you're interested meet me tomorrow at seven pm sharp. Same place as last time."

"Sure."

* * *

><p>Exactly at the appointed time, Janne slipped into the corner booth beside Blomkvist. The crowd was a bit thicker this time, but it wasn't so late that it was full-on rush hour.<p>

"Order something. We have some time to sit and wait."

"Wait for what?"

"A train." Blomkvist paused for a moment as a group of five university students walked by. It was better if no one else accidently heard what was coming next. "Tonight you and I are going to break into an active crime scene, which will likely have an overnight guard sitting outside the door watching. I need ten minutes to grab some documents and then get out and after that I'll move some things around to make it look like a crime scene robbery. All you have to do is stick a Taser to a man's throat. So: name your price."

"You want me to name my price?"

"You'll be more involved than this than I will. Tell me an amount, and I will give it to you after the deed is done."

"Let's see." He pulled out an iPhone with a lime green cover, swiping and pinching his fingers across the three-inch screen. "OK. According to this, the fine for a B&E is ten thousand even. Assaulting a friend of law and order: four years and seventy thousand. All that plus an extra twenty and you have yourself a deal."

_A hundred thousand kronor for fifteen minutes of work._ Blomkvist didn't even flinch. "Done."

"Done? Just like that? Are you going to murder me afterwards or something so you don't have to pay?"

"Right now I could care less about money. What I'm after has no financial value."

"I see."

Blomkvist smiled. "You don't, but thanks anyway."

"I may not see why you want to commit a felony, but I can see why Wasp wants to protect you."

"Because I have many stupid, reckless ideas. Believe me, I've been told many, _many_ times." He shook his good wrist, checking his watch. Seven thirty. The normal dinner crowd was beginning to trickle into the restaurant. Blomkvist had no intention of being noticed here. "I think it's dark enough outside to not be noticed. Let's go stage a robbery."

They walked in silence to the nearest tunnelbana station, eyes glued for the most part to the ground directly in front of them. This area of Stockholm wasn't so bad when it came to people recognizing him, but once they were in Söder more heads were bound to turn. To avoid this, Blomkvist grabbed Janne by the arm and pulled him from the train at Slussen where they quietly made their way up the hill behind Milton.

Blomkvist, now well trained in the art of spotting unmarked cars, quickly noticed nothing out of order on the quiet, dead-end street. But that did not mean they were in the clear yet. A quick look into the parking garage under the building and he found a marked police car parked in Lisbeth's usual spot, as well as what looked suspiciously like key marks along the tank of her motorcycle.

Lisbeth was not going to be pleased about that when she got back.

Back on street level, he handed off the Taser to Janne. For the first time that day, he looked unsure of himself.

Blomkvist sighed to himself.

"Just stick it in your pocket and act clueless. Keep your back to them the whole time; put some headphones in to look like you can't hear. When they come up and tap your shoulder telling you to get lost, whip around and get them in the neck."

Janne looked down at the weapon in his hand. No time to back out now. "You sound experienced in this kind of thing."

"I'm imaginative, it's a prerequisite for a journalist," Blomkvist said, unlocking the front door and giving Janne a good clap on the shoulder, "I'll be on the fourth floor landing, you'll be on the fifth. Give me a shout when you're done."

The whole scenario ended just as he thought. The night officer didn't even have a chance to react before being knocked out cold by the electrical shock of the Taser. After checking there were no wires or alarms that could be set off, Janne gave him the all clear to come up to the fifth floor.

"Did he see your face?"

"No. How long do you think he'll be out for?"

Blomkvist pulled on a set of leather gloves before using his set of keys to slice through the tape that had been used to seal the apartment. "Ten, fifteen minutes. Wait here."

He wasted no time ransacking the apartment, making it look as though someone had decided to break into a crime scene. It was a relatively common occurrence, so he doubted the police would think it was anything more sophisticated. A few cabinets left open, some odds and ends scatter around the floor, and some clever repositioning of some of the more expensive items in the apartment would add to the effect.

Two minutes in, he walked into the office, immediately noticing the collapsed desk covered in fine fingerprint powder. It looked like someone had managed to fall back on it at just the right angle and snapped it in two. The file cabinets had been completely cleaned out, but Blomkvist doubted Lisbeth kept any of her important documents in something that sat unlocked.

If she kept a safe somewhere in the apartment he would be completely fucked, he realized.

The bedroom was also predictably empty of anything that could pique his interest. He did look up to see a few of his own shirts were missing off the back of the bedroom door, but thankfully his passport was still in the top drawer of the dresser. He pocketed it before moving on to the kitchen.

At once he noticed that a cabinet door had been removed and what looked liked a few drops of blood on the linoleum floor. He could only imagine what had gone on inside the apartment in the few minutes Lisbeth had been there.

Time was beginning to run out has he opened every cupboard door. He didn't trust Lisbeth's hacker friend to know what to do if the cop came around again and neither did he. With everything up top scoured, he moved to under the sink and drawers, now breaking out into a sweat. He hated to think of what would happen if the title was in some numbered account in Switzerland instead.

"If I were a deed, where would I be…" His fingers brushed against something with a crinkly texture and a little bit of give to it underneath the silverware drawer. Paper. "Hidden."

Forks and knives were dumped unceremoniously across the floor so he could get a better look at the object. It was a manila envelope and he could almost swear without a doubt it was the exact same one he had removed from Lisbeth's PO box the year before.

Now ten minutes in and with time growing short, he stuffed the folded envelope inside his jacket and stepped out onto the landing, shutting the door behind him. He didn't even bother trying to fix the sealing tape before grabbing Janne and getting the hell out of the building, running back down the hill to the tunnelbana station before parting ways at T-Central.

In Akalla he got off the train and called a cab. By nine he was back in his sister's office, shuffling through the financial reports enclosed within it until he found a handwritten letter.

Jeremy S. MacMillan. Queensway Quay, Gibraltar.

There were no direct flights to Gibraltar when he opened up Stockholm-Arlanda's main website. His best bet was flying direct to Malaga that left six the next morning and then taking a cab to Gibraltar.

_I had to get away from it all and caught the first flight out of Stockholm._

The next morning he packed a bag and he left a note on the kitchen counter explaining that he was going to spend a week at Sandhamm.

* * *

><p>Eight hours after leaving Stockholm, Blomkvist stepped out of a Spanish cab and in front of a row of neo-classical officeapartment buildings, all having to do with financial services. He found the one he was looking for at the very end of the row.

There was no doorbell or intercom, so he wound up banging on the door. After a solid two minutes of beating furiously, he finally heard the sound of footsteps and a lock turning.

When the door opened the man took one look at him before suddenly slamming the door just as Blomkvist shoved the folder he'd been carrying between the door in the frame.

He hadn't really expected he would get a warm reception from Lisbeth's head bookkeeper, anyways.

"Lisbeth. Where is she?"

"I don't know-"

"You wouldn't have tried slamming the door in my face if that were true. I'm not police or Interpol. I know exactly what happens here, but I honestly don't care. Where's Lisbeth?"

"Let him in! He's not a cop!"

MacMillan continued to eye him suspicious before finally letting him past. The entry was choked with cigarette smoke from a brand he didn't recognize. At the end of the hall was a main office. Wedged in between two bookshelves was Lisbeth, sprawled on her back across a black leather loveseat.

"Kalle, Jeremy. Jeremy, Kalle." She said, pointed at the both of them before addressing him directly. "I'll give you a solid four style points on the break-in, seven for thinking of it and ten for actually having the balls to do it, Kalle."

"Your assistant did all the morally grey work."

Out of the corner of his eye he could see MacMillan sit down, but his eyes never left his backside.

"He also swindled you on the pay."

"A hundred thousand kronor is just a fraction of twenty-five million," he said, "And I'd rather be rid of Wennerström money sooner rather than later."

Her index finger rapidly smashed into the backspace key, "Who said it was Wennerström money? How do you know that I haven't spent the last two and a half weeks emptying other bank accounts?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Have you been emptying other bank accounts?" The idea that she might decide to take even more than what she already had hadn't really crossed his mind, but she certainly could if she wanted to.

"See for yourself." She spun the laptop around to face him, the page filled with a language he couldn't really make out save for a few select words.

"Explain."

"These are all the transaction reports from six different accounts at the Bank of Estonia with the equivalent of thirty-seven million SEK in them. Twenty-five million of it was sent to the account I set up for you to mess with. There's still one more account to crack into, but it's tiny compared to the other ones. Maybe a half a million max."

"Half a million isn't something to joke about." _And you don't just give away twenty five million_.

She ignored him. "The accounts are relatively simple. The first six, the big six, are all reserve accounts never meant to be used other than for major purchases. The last account is a day-to-day expense type of account. So far drained the ones that are never looked at and then I'll go back for the important one last so they have nothing to fall back on. They won't have shit to there name. Boo-hoo no money, but more importantly Shroder won't have anything to bribe the police with. He'll have some cash laying around the house if he's smart that might be able to get him out of the country, but after that he's going to be completely fucked up the ass."

"So who are you going to give Shroder's address to and how soon can we expect to see a news bulletin on this?"

"I don't have to tell anyone he's broke. Once the police know, he's dead." She looked up at him, frowning slightly. "You can sit if you want. The chairs aren't going to light your ass on fire."

"I spent two weeks sitting in a hospital bed. I'm fine. I'm also assuming Camilla also uses the expense account as well."

"Every fucking day. She's a credit card person. No cash withdrawals. Kind of stupid, kind of smart. I can watch her better this way than with the phone, plus there's no way for her to figure it out until she get's rejected by the bank, and then the jig is up." "Who the fuck uses plastic to buy coffee?"

"Oh don't pull that, you used my card to buy a bagel three days ago." Lisbeth shot him her classic acidic look. MacMillan's hands immediately shot up as he caught the glare directed at him. "I'll butt out now."

"I don't care. Is the system up and working yet?"

"Nope. Still not showing all the totals."

"Fuck. Bring it over here," she said as MacMillan passed the laptop over the desk. "Interpol crashed the party five days ago. I crashed his laptop so they didn't find anything. It's been acting screwy ever since. And if you want I can pay off your next Millennium office with Wennerström money. Get the fucker rolling around in his shallow grave?"

"I'll worry about the finances, thank you. No donations, legitimate or illegal are necessary."

"Bullshit. The insurance you've been paying into won't even cover a quarter of the rebuilding costs. Unless you have a secret pot of gold somewhere I don't know about, you're fucked."

"Thank you for your astute assessment. But I'm going to pass on the charity."

"Your loss. Jeremy, take him on a tour of the Rock. I need to get shit done and have a fucking headache."

* * *

><p>"So what was that little bit about Interpol last week?"<p>

They had barely stepped out of the building when Blomkvist asked the question that had been bothering him since the topic was mentioned.

"Not much to say, really. The police in Sweden found some of her financial documents I assume. My name and company were listed, so naturally they decided to come knocking, wondering into the legality of all of it."

"What did you do about it?"

"Handed over the computer, obviously. Lisbeth had a failsafe built into the system. If anyone needed to snoop all they would see is a completely legitimate looking Security Company once the failsafe was tripped." MacMillan made a left turn, taking them closer to the heart of Gibraltar and away from the harbor. "Cooperation always helps dissuade suspicion if you use it in the right amounts."

"How long has she been here?"

"Arrived midday just over two weeks ago. She sleeps maybe two hours a day, then goes back to draining those Estonian accounts. I've never seen her at work before. It's a bit terrifying, actually."

"Even more so if you're on the receiving end." At the end of the street he looked up at the large monolith that loomed over Gibraltar. "So that's 'The Rock,' is it?"

"The one and only. There's a café at the top near the Moorish castle if you're interested."

Blomkvist just shrugged and let MacMillan lead the way.

* * *

><p>By the time they got back to MacMillan's office, the streetlights were just beginning to come on. It was brighter here than it was in Stockholm, but it still felt incredibly strange to for it to still be somewhat daylight at six.<p>

Despite their mutual distrust of each other, MacMillan gradually seemed to ease up as the day went on. Blomkvist was still slightly leery of the man, but as MacMillan paused to look into the office before heading up to his apartment for the night, he knew the man had Lisbeth's best interests at heart.

Lisbeth herself seemed to be stuck between sleep and staring at the ceiling when he walked into the darkened office and knelt down beside the couch. Her laptop was still open, but had cut to a screensaver of intertwining beams of light.

"You need to see a doctor."

"What?" She jumped at the sudden intrusion. One look at his face and she seemed to instantly know what he was going on about. "I'm fine."

"You're most certainly not fine. You're solicitor told me what happened. You jumped out of a window and into a rosebush for god sake and on top of that you obviously have some sort of allergy to the codeine you're taking." He raised his hand to trace a few of the red and raised scratches on the back of her arm. "And some of the rosebush cuts look infected."

"Fuck off and let me get hives in peace." She snapped at him as she jerked her arm away. Blomkvist didn't miss the slight wince at the sudden motion. "I'm not going to stop breathing."

"I hope not."

"You should have stayed at Annika's."

"I know. But I missed you." It was the simplest explanation.

"Fucking Kalle…"

It was his turn to frown as he stood and looked down at her. Something didn't quite seem right. "I do not appreciate you telling your hacker friend to call me that."

"Be happy I didn't add in the 'fucking.'" She groaned and immediately raised a hand to shield her eyes as Blomkvist flipped on the end table light. "Turn that fucking thing off! I have a fucking headache!"

"And you're flushed and likely have a fever from an infection to go with that headache." He said, flipping the light off again. "You're not fine at all."

She snorted at that and shut her laptop before resting it on the table directly behind her head.

"I'm going back to Stockholm tomorrow. You can come with or stay here and be hit on by Jeremy." He quirked an eyebrow at that. "Goodnight and go away."

* * *

><p>It was still dark outside when Blomkvist was awakened by something heavy dropping to the floor. It took him a moment to remember were he was and yet another moment to realize that Lisbeth was already up and moving.<p>

"It's too early to be up." Blomkvist groaned slightly, rubbing his eyes as Lisbeth flew around the office, packing up whatever had accumulated there in the last two weeks. Most of it was clothing, though he did see a few manila folders of who knew what slide into a dark green duffel bag he had never seen before.

His sweater from the day before was launched at his face from the back of the solicitor's leather swivel chair. "The flight from Malaga leaves at one. Be ready in forty-five or you get left. There's food in the kitchenette down the hall. You might want to shower, too."

When forty-five minutes were up, he joined Lisbeth and surprisingly MacMillan beside the stairs leading up to the solicitor's apartment.

She nodded to MacMillan. "We're out."

* * *

><p>After whistling through the border crossing, Lisbeth propped her handbag up against the window and was quickly out like a light while Blomkvist stared out the window at the coast. He'd barely left Stockholm except for his military service, so the view to him was spectacular. He could see the appeal it may have had when Lisbeth had decided to set up her operations in Gibraltar. It was the anti-Sweden; warm, sunny, and no one to recognize her out on the street.<p>

For most of the ride they stayed that way. Lisbeth was still out cold by the time they arrived at the airport and made no attempt to hide her irritation at being woken up. Whatever effects the painkillers had were clearly wearing off by the time they were whisked through customs and onto the plane. As far as he knew she'd left them in Gibraltar and would be in for a very uncomfortable if not downright painful five-hour flight back to Stockholm. Both of them knew how utterly ridiculous it would be to come so far only to be stopped for taking street level painkillers abroad.

Despite whatever discomfort the lack of pills brought on, Lisbeth Salander was dead to the world by the time the plane hit cruising altitude, her head lolling slightly on his shoulder as the plane bounced up and down. Without even directly touching her, he could feel the waves of heat rolling off her face and dissipating into his shirt. Whatever downfall she had planned for her sister using the bank accounts, he hoped it would be quick. He didn't think he could stand the idea of watching her work herself to death.

The sky outside the window as dark as the plane began to pitch forward into its final decent. The sudden drop in altitude sent Lisbeth jolting awake and clutching at her ear, and Blomkvist would have laughed had the exact same thing not happened to him as well. He also didn't feel like having her fist slam into his shoulder, already sore from the feel of her head resting there peacefully for five hours.

By the time they had cleared the final customs checkpoint their luggage had made its seventh trip around the baggage carousel. He watched with visible concern painted across his face as Lisbeth seemed to struggle to hoist her bag up onto her shoulder, but she refused any attempt Blomkvist made to help.

He wasn't really surprised at all.

* * *

><p>Her back was killing her. It was a feeling she thought was reserved only for the elderly up until five days ago when she was faced with the split decision of staying in MacMillan's office and possibly being caught by the police or jumping from a second story window into what she assumed was a non-thorny type of bush. Never mind that it was in fact a rosebush in dormancy for the winter and that there was a massive broken brick planter that the damn bush had completely overgrown and obscured.<p>

She had nearly smashed Jeremy's Sony laptop over his head when he asked about it.

At first everything felt fine, but by morning she could scarcely lift her upper body up off the couch without immediately backwards as pain shot up from her lower back. She figured she had just slipped a disc. A bottle of cheap codeine from right over the border would fix it just fine.

A bottle of cheap codeine that had her breaking out in hives within two hours.

Now five days later she had been reduced to kicking her duffel bag along the through the endless rows of long-term parking, looking for her familiar burgundy Honda Civic. Blomkvist had insisted that he go too, but she really didn't want him bumbling around like his usual practical pig self. The constant looks he had shot her when he thought she'd been sleeping during the cab ride to Spain were irritating enough. She didn't want to wait for him to start running his mouth, too.

The squelch of tires spinning out on the rain soaked asphalt caught her attention; her eyes barely saw the two low headlights aimed straight at her before she was suddenly sent hurtling through the air into the side of a van. The last thing she remembered were two black converse shoes walking towards her.

**One more chapter to go!**

**Please review. They make me happy. :)**


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

** ATTENTION: Rating now M for Mature. Alternating torture scenes throughout the chapter. You have been warned.**

**I'm sorry for disappearing for eight months again. Time flies. Oops…**

_February 24__th__ – 27__th_

Her hands were bound ahead of her, stretched out and wedged into a wood vise while the rest of her was attached to a wooden chair with several rolls of duct tape. A single bulb hung from the ceiling, of what she soon saw was an unfinished basement with a thin vapor barrier covering pink insulation. The walls were lined with various woodworking tools and several paint cans had been stacked in a pyramid to the right of her. In the corner there seemed to be a new batch of concrete that had probably been laid recently. Directly in front of her there was a single window leading to the outside, a black garbage bag taped over it puffing in and out slightly.

_A way to escape_.

She tried to test the tape bonds, only to nearly cry out as pain shot through the right side of her ribs. _She hit me with her fucking car_, she thought, remembering how one moment she was popping the trunk of her car and the next she was flying into the side of another car before blacking out completely.

Fate, it seemed, was never on her side.

With squirming her way out of her bonds a dead end unless she wanted to risk puncturing a lung, she tried to free her hands, which were stuck palms facing outward against two opposing wood blocks. She tried to get her legs up to push against the edge of workbench, but there was no give to be found at all. It was the strangest, but somehow most effective way to be immobilized she had ever seen. She was at complete liberty to stand up; the chair was not bolted or secured down in any fashion. All Camilla needed to do was to bind her hands and jam them in a wood vise for her to be completely helpless. It didn't help her case at all that she felt like complete crap, either.

In fact, she'd felt like complete shit for the past three days. Kalle was right; the rosebush cuts had become infected. But she was too fucking stubborn to walk into a clinic in her Irene Nesser get-up and get a bottle of antibiotics. She'd been totally fine with sending Jeremy out to buy the codeine pills off the street, but for some reason she hadn't seen the sense of going out and getting something for the cuts. Even some simple penicillin would probably have worked in the earlier stages. Now she could only think of what she was in for if she managed to get out.

And that was a very big 'if' indeed.

Though all she wanted to do was sleep, she refused to let her guard down. Whatever plan her sister had, she wanted to be ready and alert, how ever long it took for her sister to show herself.

With no clock or exterior light source, she could only assume hours had passed since she finally came around that the door to the basement finally opened. She listened as her sister descended all seventeen steps to the bottom, unable to turn around and watch herself.

Two hands suddenly crashed down on her shoulders, but she didn't so much as blink. "Hello sister!"

Lisbeth watched with a stoic expression as her sister hopped up and sat cross-legged on the workbench directly across from her. "You look like someone ran over you with a car. Wait, that was me."

She hadn't changed since they had last seen each other ten years ago. She was short, like both their parents, but still several inches taller than Lisbeth. Her upper body was more muscular and toned, probably from hauling around bodies in Estonia.

But her appearance was wildly unkempt. Her hair was resorting back to its natural red after its latest dye job, but seemed to not have seen so much as a bottle of shampoo in at least a week. Her shirt was wrinkled and looked to have what might have been bloodstains on it.

"Fuck you."

She was completely unfazed. "Fuck you first. Don't you miss our fights when we were little? We were awful little shits."

"There's only one piece of shit here and I'm looking right at it."

"That really stings," she said, placing a hand lightly over where a heart should have been, "Deeply. Even bound in a chair you still try to pick fights with people bigger than you."

She leapt down from the workbench, walking around it slowly in a circle as her fingers traced the wood.

"So how do you like my new crib? It's not really mine; I'm just borrowing it for now. I actually never came down here until I had to find a place to put you. The workbench was a nice streak of luck." At the end of the table she stopped, her hand resting on the crank attached to the vise.

Instantly Lisbeth knew what her sister had in store for her. "I've seen better hell holes."

"Did any of them have your hands stuck a wood vise?" Suddenly Camilla shifted her weight onto the crank and Lisbeth found herself in a world of agony that could barely be hidden behind her usual mask of indifference as her knuckles were crushed together between two blocks of wood.

"Not exactly."

"That's too bad." Another half turn of the vise shot more pain up through her arms. "I think I'm going to go out for a while. After that I'll come back and help you get even more acquainted with this fun little tool."

* * *

><p>'<strong>No new messages.'<strong>

For perhaps the seventh time in the last half hour, Blomkvist stuffed his regular phone into his breast pocket and gave a long sigh. The chair he was sitting in was too plush and reminded him of his two weeks spent in at Söder, so he got up and began to pace through the executive lounge. He didn't think he'd irritated her to the point of being left behind, but he did concede to himself that it was possible. He'd like to think she'd at least send him a message to stop with the texts, though.

Just as he reached into his pocket to check the time, white emergency lights began to flash around the terminal. The few individuals that had fallen asleep looked around in a confused state as the lights became accompanied by a shrill alarm and burly security personnel.

"_Attention, Attention. An emergency has been reported in the international terminal. For your safety, please exit the terminal immediately and await further instruction."_

Two pairs of boots appeared in front of him as he bent to pick up his own bag. "Mikael Blomkvist?"

He stood then, hauling his bag onto his shoulder and looking at the two officers with skepticism. "That would be me."

The men exchanged glances before the slightly smaller officer said, "Come with us."

The halls leading away from the international terminal were choked with passengers and bags, the three men having to fight their way through the chaos. Through the terminal windows, Mikael thought he could see several K-9 units scouring the perimeter of the airport, police in riot gear not far behind.

The fact that he himself had been singled out had him on edge. What if Lisbeth had been found? Or worse; Camilla? It would certainly explain the newly arrived bomb squad, he thought as he was led through the main security door and into what looked to be a room full of camera feeds.

Modig and Holmberg were sitting in front of a monitor displaying the long-term parking lot.

"Blomkvist."

"Sonja."

Modig pointed to the chair beside her. "Sit."

Blomkvist complied with the order just as the two officers left. He watched as Modig repeatedly played and reversed a particular feed. After a minute she paused the tape and turned to face him.

"About forty-five minutes ago, Lisbeth Salander was abducted from the long-term parking by what appeared to be her sister. We've already put out a kidnapping alert across the country and are setting up checkpoints on all highways going in and out of Stockholm."

And there it was. For forty-five minutes, he'd sat around doing absolutely nothing except calling a phone that had likely been taken or run over. He should have followed her from the very beginning. Now he was at a complete loss. There was no trail of breadcrumbs for him to follow. No car rental records he could use to track either of them down.

He turned from the security monitors to face the only people with a hope for finding Lisbeth. "What have you figured out so far?"

"Based on the looks of the car on these tapes we're looking for a newer black VW Jetta."

"Can you get a plate number?"

"Not off of these tapes. The lighting's too poor. We can enhance it when we take it back to the lab, but even then I'm not going to be optimistic and say that we can pull a full plate number."

* * *

><p>"I'm back! How are the hands? Still throbbing or have we passed into the numb stage and need to up the ante a little bit?"<p>

"Cold. You should turn the heater on." Lisbeth could hear her sister's footsteps coming closer to the chair, but she could not move her neck to see exactly where the bitch was.

"Is that a plea for comfort?" A light hand dragged across the tops of her shoulders as Camilla walked around the chair and dropped took a knee in front of Lisbeth. "Things are about to get very uncomfortable for you, sis."

With all the speed and ferocity she had left, Lisbeth jutted her neck out and head-butted her sister squarely on the bridge of her nose. Just as rapidly as she had lashed out, Camilla viciously backhanded her sister before clutching at her bleeding nose.

"That was a very bad idea," she said, rewarding her sister with three full turns of the vise.

* * *

><p>While Modig and Holmberg were hunched over the parking lot's security footage, Blomkvist quietly stepped out of the room and pulled his phone from his pocket. If the police couldn't figure out a serial number, then maybe a hacker could.<p>

"Janne. I need another favor."

"Depends. When am I getting paid for the last favor?"

"I'm getting the cash together, but I need more time. This favor directly concerns Wasp."

"Yeah?"

"It's not pretty. Four hours ago she was abducted by her sister right out of Arlanda's long-term parking. Her sister is planning to kill her and I doubt she'll be very humane about it."

"How can I help a fellow hacker in need?"

"Find her. The police think she was abducted by her sister in a black VW Jetta, but that's all they've managed to figure out. "

"That's not much. But I'll try. I need to get in touch with Plague on this. He can help too."

"Pull out all the stops. Talk to whomever you need to. But please help me find her." He repeated.

* * *

><p>Somehow she managed to fall asleep after hours of excruciating pain gradually began to fade to a low thrumming throughout her hands and arms, though any slight movement on her part would instantly revive the agony. She was sure she'd been in the basement for at least a day, though it felt infinitely longer. Her mouth was dry and her stomach tight, though if her sister brought any source of food down she would have immediately rejected it.<p>

All she wanted to do was sleep. Her face felt hot yet chills had begun to wrack her body. Even if she gritted her teeth together she couldn't altogether silence her chattering teeth. In the waking hours she spent alone wondered how having her hands slowly crushed would affect the infection that was rapidly defeating her faster than the pain.

She looked down at her hands, now an alarming shade of dark purple. Camilla had turned the vice only four times, yet Lisbeth swore the blocks had come closer together by almost an inch.

She wondered if her sister had any clue she were a hacker and how vital dexterity and maneuverability were to her. There was no telling how many more turns it would take to crush all twenty-seven bones in her hand past the point of repair.

After continuing that train of thought through its various avenues for an hour, she decided to sleep again.

* * *

><p>He didn't even pretend he could fall asleep that first night when he booked a room at the Hilton, Annika still under the impression that he was at Sandhamm. At half past three in the morning, TV4 was still running breaking news on the kidnapping, although Lisbeth's name had not been published as Modig had promised. He watched anxiously for any new developments, but hour-by-hour, nothing had changed. He called Modig at least six times until she became so frustrated with his persistence that she blocked his number. She assured him she would call if anything new cropped up, but until then they needed space.<p>

He also began to realize that with each call he was wasting whatever minutes he had left to contact Janne or Plague, who was not answering calls. Blomkvist could only hope he too was also busy with solving where Camilla had taken Lisbeth.

At that point there was little else to do but hope for the best.

By ten the next morning, the news had slightly reverted back to it's regular programming, the kidnapping still being mentioned in the ticker tape and during top of the hour bulletins. Blomkvist sat on the edge of his hotel bed wrapped in the comforter drinking the last of the room's complimentary coffee as traffic cameras displayed the havoc the previous night's rain had wreaked upon the highways outside Stockholm.

He nearly choked on his coffee when the idea came to him. Traffic cameras. Hackers. Hackers tracking the car using traffic cameras. The idea was too perfect to be true, he thought as he dialed three on the pre-paid.

He didn't even wait for a hello. "How many traffic cameras are on the E4?"

"I don't know." The young hacker yawned, "Between where and where?"

"Arlanda and anywhere. Do you think it's possible to track a car using the traffic cam feeds?"

There was a lengthy pause to the extent Blomkvist almost thought the call had dropped.

"Fuck!" Blomkvist yanked the phone from his ear as Janne rattled off a stream of expletives. "Yes Kalle! Yes! That is fucking perfect! Why didn't I think about that? I'm on it!" The hacker dropped the call before Blomkvist could say another word.

* * *

><p>Somewhere between fevered dreams and lucid nightmares, she instinctually gasped as icy water was splashed across her face and torso. She narrowed her swollen and bloodshot eyes only to see her sister wearing a large coat and sitting on the bench far enough away that Lisbeth couldn't head-butt her again.<p>

"Just thought I'd wake you up and warn you that the power's been cut off. It's going to get pretty cold down here soon," she said, "I'll be back after I go out and buy some firewood for upstairs."

Lisbeth's eyes never left her sister's as the vise was slowly twisted another turn and a half, accompanied by a barely audible snapping sound. When it was all said and done, Camilla hopped down from the bench and left the basement without a single look or word aimed towards her sister.

Lisbeth waited for what might have been a door upstairs slamming before screaming into the black nothingness before her for the first time.

By what she guessed was the second day of her imprisonment a camera had been hooked up to a support beam in the center of the basement. She could barely see it out of the corner of her eye if she turned her head all the way to the side, a task that was slowly becoming more and more difficult. She couldn't see where it was feeding into or where it was getting its power supply from, but she suspected Camilla's comment about the power was merely one of her many lies to help her introduce a new torture method.

And hypothermia was proving to be just as effective has hand crushing.

Eventually the basement door opened again, and Camilla came down with a smug look on her face.

"You've been down here a while now. No books, no TV, no Internet. Pretty boring if you ask me. So how about I tell you a story?"

"Once there was a time I want fishing, probably…six years ago. I sat out in a boat with Jarrod and Horst for six hours in the Baltic during the summer, not reeling in a damn thing. Every time I got something on the line, I'd reel it in so hard that the line would snap."

"The sixth or seventh time I got something on the line, Horst decided to take my line away from me saying, 'You have to let the fish win a little. Reel it in, then let it out, but then reel it back in a little more.'"

"So while I was sitting upstairs in front of the stove I thought that I should let you win a little. That I should give you a little slack."

Somewhere on the Internet, Lisbeth had once read about the effects of reperfusion syndrome. In the event of the crushing force being suddenly removed from the affected person's limb, the person would often go into a state of euphoria before dying shortly after from renal failure caused by the chemical remains of long-dead cells suddenly overloading the kidneys.

As all the blood came rushing back into her mangled hands, she could find no euphoria and openly howled as her sister watched on with a calculating smile.

* * *

><p>Blomkvist was in the main lobby of the Hilton using the guest computer when his pre-paid rang.<p>

"You found the car?"

"I found the car."

"Where?"

"From Arlanda the car pops up on all the cams up until the E18 intersection. At the E18 the car gets off the highway and heads west. It doesn't pop up at the 279, so the car must have gotten off before then. Just in case it switched directions I checked out the 176 cam, and nothing popped up either."

"Brilliant, Janne."

"It gets better. I ran the plates and it turns out that the car belongs to a local parolee named Per-Ake Sandstrom."

"Fuck."

"Problem?"

"I know where Wasp is." Blomkvist waved at an idling cab beneath the guest drop-off, "I have to go. If I don't call in half an hour, call Inspector Jan Bublanski. Tell him the address. You can look it up on your own."

Blomkvist hung up without reply.

With the cab door shut he threw all the bills left in his wallets into the front seat and began directing the driver to the Solna address.

* * *

><p>"I just got off the phone with Jarrod. Thirty-eight million seems to have gone missing." Camilla stood behind her, her nails digging into Lisbeth's shoulder to the point of drawing beads of blood. "I think you know where it is."<p>

"Fuck…off."

A knife ripped its way down her spine, slicing through her t-shirt and severing the tape that had kept her bound to the chair for three days. What had once been the only thing preventing her from kicking her sister's ass across the basement floor had suddenly become the only thing holding her upright in a chair that was quickly hooked out from under her.

"Where. Is. It?"

The only thing holding her up now were her hands, trapped so tightly in the vise that her wrists couldn't even dislocate properly as the rest of her body had been swept out from under her.

"I should have backed over you a few more times and then carried on my way. You're too much trouble to keep alive, even for a little while," she said, pacing around beside the workbench.

"You want to leave?" Camilla screamed as her hand dropped to rest on the crank. "Be my guest!"

Six spins were all it took. Lisbeth's hands slipped free of the wood vise as she fell backwards to the ground, unable to move a single muscle. Her hands felt like they were being attacked by the pins and needles from hell as blood rushed back into the mangled veins and arteries.

Her sister loomed less than a foot away, staring down at her with something between fascination and disgust.

Lisbeth didn't even have the strength to roll away as her sister's shoe collided with her side ribs. "Go!"

"Go!" Another kick and this time they both heard the telltale crack. This seemed to egg her on, sending blow after blow into her sister's side. "Go! Get up! Fight back!"

And then the kicks stopped.

"Fucking pathetic." Her shoe was now bearing down on the side of Lisbeth's skull, just above her ear. Eight pounds of pressure and it would all be over. "Would you like me to kill you now and save you a few hours?"

No one was coming for her. The police were too late. Blomkvist was too late. She'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time and now she was going die to where she lay.

She was going to die, but she was not going to beg.

"Fuck…off."

She couldn't see her sister's face, but could hear the sadistic smile she'd grown to expect every time the vise was turned. "Suit yourself."

* * *

><p>The streets and driveways of the quiet Solna neighborhood were empty of any signs of life when Blomkvist stepped out of a cab a block away from the cul-de-sac that Sandström lived in. Four houses down on the end of the street was the white stucco building he had visited only twice in his life. He supposed he had a slight advantage that way if worse came to worse, though if Camilla had been staying there for any length of time she would know the lay of the house even better than he.<p>

In the driveway a car was parked with a grey cover wrapped tightly over it. It had the right dimensions to it to be a Jetta by Blomkvist's estimation.

For a moment he stood beside the car, weighing his different options. If he went in through the back kitchen door he would be unnoticed by anyone who might be peeping from behind their curtains. If he went in through the front door he would be closer to the basement steps. If he climbed through the music room's window, he would have the best line of sight into the house.

He chose to go with the music room window, which he found was slightly ajar. With the help of a flower planter lying nearby he was able to boost himself up inside, immediately stopping and checking for any sign that his intrusion was noticed.

Nothing.

From the archway leading into the house he could see into both the living room and dining room, both completely empty. On the dining room table he thought he could see a decent sized Glock lying there in plain sight beside what looked like Lisbeth's fake passport and cigarette case. He stared at it for less than a second before deciding the reward outweighed the risk in grabbing the pistol. The magazine was missing two shots. _One had been meant for Annika._

One by one, he cleared each room, the barrel of the pistol resting lightly in his sling and ready to be drawn in a fraction of a second.

Finally there was only one last place to check.

And it just had to be a fucking basement.

Footsteps suddenly thundered up the stairs, the door flinging open just inches from his face.

And there stood Camilla Salander, looking like a bat out of hell.

Her hand flew to her front sweater pocket, a handgun clearly outlined through the dark green fabric. He barely dived out of the way before the sound of a high caliber pistol rang out, the shot hitting a picture frame just above his head. Glass rained down into his hair as he fired from behind an end table, the shot going wide and shattering the music room window he'd climbed through earlier.

Camilla disappeared into the kitchen.

_Shit_.

If she was fast enough she could come up behind him through the kitchen archway.

And he was not going out with a bullet in his back.

He heard the hammer of her pistol click just in time to dive into the living room. A single shot flew into the ottoman to his left as he landed hard on his front, gun still gripped tightly in his hand. Another shot went through the back of the sofa before he could even turn around, coming within inches of his head.

He was essentially pinned down in the lair of a madwoman with only two options.

Wait or shoot.

Two shots smashed into the green backsplash as he returned fire over the living room sofa, each one ricocheting off into an unknown direction as he ducked behind the sofa again. Seconds passed. Nothing. He didn't dare look up in case she was waiting for him, instead crawling back the way he came for a better view of behind the kitchen island.

When he reached the end of the hallway he poked his head around the corner, staying low.

He could see the gun under the butcher's block and out of reach from the crumpled figure facedown on the floor. Bits of shattered porcelain covered much of the floor and counters where the shots had rebounded off the backsplash.

Gun still poised in his hand, he should and walked slowly into the kitchen. A hideous sucking noise immediately alerted him that she was still alive, if only barely. Blood was already seeping through the front of the green hoodie she was wearing, pooling onto the hardwood floor beneath her.

If he left her like that she would surely die.

If she died he would go to prison for at least ten years.

"I'm going to make a seal for these. Any funny business and I'll just get up and leave."

He found a package of white zip ties in the kitchen drawer next to a roll of duct tape and package of AA batteries.

Only when her hands were secured behind her back did he dare to look for anything he could use to seal the gunshot wound. In a cabinet next to the fridge he found a few sandwich bags that he could couple with a few strips of duct tape to seal off the sucking wounds in her back and front. She remained so eerily silent during the whole process that several times he found himself checking her pulse just to be sure she was still alive.

"You shoot…your enemies and…then stitch them up," she said in barely a whisper. "How…chivalrous of you."

"You're going to go to court," he said, ignoring her as he finished sealing the third edge on the plastic sandwich bag on her back, "And then you're going to prison and from there no parole board would ever in their right mind let you out."

When it looked as if she were going to bite out some sort of sarcastic remark, a horrible cough wracked her body, spraying the bottom cabinet with a fine, bloody mist. He couldn't even attempt to feel any sort of guilt for what he'd caused.

"Now I'm going to ask you this once; where is Lisbeth?"

"Too late to be the…hero, Kalle. I killed her."

Camilla gave out a bark he supposed was supposed to be a laugh.

"That's not…how it works Kalle."

He pressed the gun up to the side of her head. "When I'm the one holding the gun, this is exactly how it works. Where. Is. She?"

Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of black figures silently surrounding the house. His thirty minutes were up. He knew what would come next. The battering ram. Loaded semi-automatics. There had been no conceivable way for their firefight earlier to go unnoticed in the little neighborhood. Looking down at the woman lying so broken on the floor for the last time, he dropped the pistol on the kitchen island and walked out of the room just as the back door caved in.

**End Women Who Hate Men**

**I'm not sure how I feel about my longest fic to-date being over.**

**TBC eventually in "Body Breakers." I have AMAZING, HORRIBLY AWESOME AND "M" RATED IDEAS FOR THE PROLOGUE! Now I just have to actually write the prologue…holy fuck it's going to have a prologue!**

**Leave a guess as to what the title means in your review!**


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